In what year was WeChat born?

WeChat was born in 2011. WeChat is a free application launched by Tencent on January 21, 2011 to provide instant messaging services for smart terminals; WeChat supports cross-communication operators and cross-operating system platforms to quickly send free (need to consume a small amount of network traffic) voice over the network Text messages, videos, pictures and texts. At the same time, you can also use service plug-ins such as sharing streaming media content and location-based social plug-ins such as "Shake", "Moments", "Public Platform" and "Voice Notepad" .

The operating environment of this tutorial: HarmonyOS 2.0 system, WeChat version 8.0.27, HONOR V30.

WeChat is a free application that provides instant messaging services for smart terminals. WeChat supports cross-communication operators and cross-operating system platforms to quickly send free (requiring a small amount of network traffic) voice messages, videos, pictures and text through the network. At the same time, you can also use data and location-based social plug-ins to share streaming media content. "Shake", "Moments", "Public Platform", "Voice Notepad" and other service plug-ins.

WeChat was planned and launched by Shenzhen Tencent Holdings Limited in October 2010. It was built by the Tencent Guangzhou R&D Center product team led by Zhang Xiaolong and launched on January 21, 2011.

In October 2010, an App called Kik attracted attention in the industry because it gained 10 million users within 15 days of its launch. Zhang Xiaolong was keenly aware of Kik’s rapid rise. One night, while studying Kik-like software, he suddenly came up with an idea: The mobile Internet will give birth to a new IM in the future, which is likely to pose a great threat to QQ.

After thinking for an hour or two, he wrote an email to Ma Huateng, suggesting that Tencent start building a new IM. Ma Huateng quickly responded to the email and expressed his agreement with Zhang Xiaolong's suggestion. Later, he took the initiative to ask for help and suggested that the Tencent Guangzhou R&D Department led by him should be responsible for the development of this project. "It is research-oriented anyway. No one knows what the future will be like," Zhang Xiaolong recalled. "The starting point of the whole process is one or two When I was young, I suddenly caught the wrong nerve, wrote this email, and started."

In fact, it is true that Zhang Xiaolong took the lead in building a new IM, but he is not the only team within Tencent who is doing this. The reason is very simple. On the one hand, Zhang Xiaolong sees new trends in the future. The emergence of Weibo is also an important reason that cannot be ignored. The latter is a powerful competitor for Tencent from the perspective of social networking. The huge sense of crisis forces it to Start the horse racing mechanism.

At that time, there were three teams within Tencent (QQ team, QQ address book team, QQ mailbox team) who signed up to make a product that could compete with Weibo and solve PC to mobile problems. In the end, the QQ mailbox team led by Zhang Xiaolong WeChat built by WeChat won the victory, successfully achieved self-subversion, and gradually became Tencent's leader on the mobile side, helping it to get the first mobile Internet ticket.

In early 2011, WeChat went online, and Zhang Xiaolong launched a text function equivalent to free text messaging in version 1.0. At that time, WeChat had a small number of users. In order to attract users, WeChat has also begun to add some more human-friendly functions, including finding nearby people, Moments, shake, drift bottles, etc. These functions were also praised as "the finishing touch" by Hong Kong's Apple Daily. After WeChat launched the "Find People Nearby" function, the growth curve of the number of users showed a steep rise; and after the "Shake" function was released, the number of WeChat users surged. In 2012, WeChat launched a foreign language version and topped the list of social software in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and other places.

After the rapid rise of WeChat, Ma Huateng once lamented that if WeChat was not in Tencent, instead of beating itself, but in another company, Tencent might not be able to stop it at all. "Looking back, the life-and-death moment was actually a month or two. At that time, several of our core executives were on it every day, researching products."

Looking back on the past eleven years, WeChat has indeed given Chinese people It has brought about many changes, maybe you have not noticed them, but changes are happening all the time. Let me list four major changes that you must feel the same way:

1. WeChat Pay allows you to say goodbye to your wallet

In August 2013, WeChat Pay was officially launched. At first, user growth was slow. , it really became an instant hit during the Spring Festival of 2014. With the support of social fission and Spring Festival Gala traffic, WeChat red envelopes became the most popular New Year gift that year, helping WeChat Pay bind 200 million personal bank cards in just 2 days, while Alipay took 8 years to do this. No wonder Jack Ma would describe the rapid rise of WeChat red envelopes as a "Pearl Harbor attack", making the entire Alipay team feel like they are facing a formidable enemy.

After this battle, WeChat Pay has the confidence to challenge Alipay. Alipay dare not underestimate this explosive rising star, and the mobile payment war is about to begin. The key to promoting mobile payment lies in scene layout. Therefore, you will see that Alibaba and Tencent are fiercely competing for popular consumption scenes, such as taxis, restaurants, supermarkets, parking lots, etc. You can always see WeChat There is a fierce competition between payment and Alipay.

The more intense the fight between the two parties is, the more consumption scenarios are covered, the more users benefit. It becomes a reality to go out without a wallet and use a mobile phone to travel around the world. Eating, drinking and having fun can all be easily settled with WeChat payment. In order to cater to the consumption habits of young people, everyone from chain supermarkets to roadside vendors will post WeChat Pay QR codes for customers to pay. Even beggars use WeChat Pay to beg. The continuous popularity of mobile payment has helped mobile payment be selected into the "Four New Inventions", and WeChat Pay is undoubtedly the number one contributor.

2. Moments allows you to keep posting

Moments is one of WeChat’s greatest inventions. It was launched in April 2021 and has now become an in-depth The national show of people's hearts, different content forms such as text, pictures, short videos, etc., make the circle of friends more and more exciting. Some people say that because of the emergence of Moments, the number of Chinese people traveling abroad, eating big meals, and consuming luxury goods has increased several times. In Moments, we have entered the ranks of developed countries ahead of schedule.

With Moments, the “average appearance” of Chinese people has also greatly improved. Beautiful and handsome men have appeared all over the place, and various beauty and photo editing tools have become popular. At the same time, the circle of friends also lets us know that our relatives and friends have not forgotten us. A like and a message are all caring. With Moments, binging has become a pursuit, a goal, and even a luxury. Sometimes it reminds people of the fear of being dominated by XX’s swiping.

Of course, the circle of friends is not necessarily all true, good and beautiful, and is also full of bad sides. For example, the WeChat merchants who sell goods are crazy about the screen, and the circle of friends has turned into a work circle and an advertising circle, gradually deviating from the original intention of interacting with friends. Therefore, you will see that many people choose to stay away from Moments, and less and less read and post in Moments. Even many highly dependent users are set to only open the last three days of updates. Indeed, circle of friends has advantages and disadvantages, it all depends on how you use it.

3. The public account will save you a few years of struggle

In August 2012, the WeChat public platform was officially launched. In fact, the original intention of the establishment of the official account was just to add some content for users to consume in the empty WeChat, but the actual development momentum far exceeded Zhang Xiaolong's expectations, and it actually triggered a vigorous new media revolution, the aftermath of which is still unresolved to this day. Absolutely, it can be seen how far-reaching the impact is.

The trendsetters of this new media revolution include traditional media people such as Luo Zhenyu, Shiliu Po, and Liushen Leilei, as well as young people whose jobs have little to do with the media, such as Lin Shao, Sha Xiaopi, and Mao Laoda. They enter the stage with different attitudes and jointly shape the new media ecology that affects Chinese people's reading. These days, who doesn’t follow a few public accounts? It truly reflects that public accounts have become a fertile ground for new media entrepreneurship, just like a new trend. WeChat helps people who don’t understand technology share the dividends of the rise of the mobile Internet in another way.

Although it is becoming more and more difficult to break through by opening a public account, the principle that content is king has never gone out of date. It is not too late to eat well, and Papi Jiang is the best proof. Those early pioneers who enjoyed the huge dividends of public accounts all lamented, "When did writing become so profitable?" The public account changed my personal destiny and saved me a few years of struggle, which has become a true portrayal of many people. They really have to thank the "Father of WeChat" Zhang Xiaolong .

4. Mini Program allows you to run away after use

Mini Program was formerly known as "Application Account". It was forced to change its name due to Apple's intervention. In January 2017, Officially launched. Its biggest feature is that there is no need to download, it can be searched and used immediately, and it implements Zhang Xiaolong's product concept of "use it and go". On the surface, small programs can replace infrequently used apps and reduce the memory load on users' mobile phones, but their greater role is to help WeChat improve its own ecosystem, attracting a large number of developers and capturing as many users as possible.

When mini programs were first launched, they were criticized by the industry due to issues such as UI design, size restrictions, and user experience. However, they have successfully withstood the test and are widely used in e-commerce, gaming and other industries. Nowadays, mini programs have become a hot trend in the industry, and super apps have even regarded them as standard features. Major Internet companies such as Alibaba, Baidu, and ByteDance have launched their own mini program platforms, and the mini program ecosystem continues to prosper.

Of course, mini programs not only serve the majority of developers and users, but are also a major benefit to WeChat itself. Although the three major sectors of the WeChat ecosystem - Official Accounts, Moments, and WeChat Payment - have a clear division of labor, they are not completely connected and seamlessly connected. Things changed a lot with the advent of mini programs, which allowed WeChat to better connect everything (people and services). No wonder Zhou Hongyi, the head of 360, couldn’t help but joke that there is no wireless Internet now, there is only “WeChat Internet”, because WeChat itself is the Internet.

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