WeChat's "Shake" grayscale offline: Zhang Xiaolong's "proud work" disappeared like a cloud

Recently, a piece of news about the "WeChat shake function being removed from the shelves" hit the social media platform. Lei Technology opened his WeChat account with mixed feelings. He wanted to remember his lost youth, but found that the "Shake" function was still retained in the WeChat iOS 8.0.48 version.

Looking at the "Shake" that might go offline at any time, Xiao Lei decided to shake the phone again. The experience was still familiar. After a few seconds of waiting, Shake to strangers thousands of kilometers away.

Source: Lei Technology

Although the iOS version was not available before deadline You can use the "Shake" function, but Apple users should not be too happy because it is only a matter of time before the iOS version removes "Shake". Some iOS users can no longer see "Shake" on WeChat. WeChat is working on It conducts grayscale removal testing (you can open your phone to see). In the WeChat Android version 8.0.47, the "Shake" function has completely disappeared, replaced by the newly launched "Listen" function. This was confirmed by Xiaolei on WeChat from many colleagues.

The "Listen" function retains the function of listening to songs and identifying songs in "Shake", and on this basis, it adds live music and music fan circles. , audio and personal settings and other options. Users can also get the right to listen to VIP songs for free by watching ads.

Source: Lei Technology

WeChat in September 2012 The "Shake" function was added for the first time in version 4.3, which has been online for more than 11 years. As one of the important functions in the early days of WeChat, "Shake", like "Sending Red Envelopes", made a great contribution to WeChat's gradual development into a national social application. Nowadays, "Shake" is gradually offline without even an official statement. It is so low-key and lonely, just like the Internet track of LBS dating.

Zhang Xiaolong’s favorite work, WeChat “Shake” is disappearing

I don’t know how many people there are Remember, WeChat once had a "People Nearby" function. This function was first launched in 2011. The page will display other users who are closer to you. Through this function, users can chat with strangers around them.

Socializing with strangers based on geographical location is actually the so-called LBS concept. The full English name is Location Based Services, which is translated as location-based services.

In our daily lives, we have actually been surrounded by this service for a long time, including Meituan providing nearby food, shared bicycles providing nearby bicycle locations, etc., all based on LBS service provided.

"People nearby" allowed WeChat to directly open up a new way of socializing. In 2012, the number of monthly active users of WeChat soared to 158 million.

Source: WeChat

And "Shake" is an extended function of "People nearby". Socializing with strangers is no longer limited to geographical location, but uses the innovation of "shake your phone at the same moment" to create a starting point for making friends full of fate. . Through an extremely simple operation method, "Shake" not only allows users to experience the fun of socializing with strangers, but also allows users to stay on WeChat for a long time and increase user stickiness. It can be said to kill two birds with one stone.

# Zhang Xiaolong, the “Father of WeChat”, once attached great importance to the “Shake” function. When the user uses this function, the sound they hear is the sound of the AK47 machine gun being loaded. This easter egg was also inspired by Zhang Xiaolong himself. In 2011, before WeChat became popular across the country, Zhang Xiaolong gave a speech at his alma mater, Huazhong University of Science and Technology. According to the 136th issue of "Blog World" magazine, he shared a lot of the design concept of the "Shake" function in his speech. He also called on the audience to shake together to add friends.

At that time, Zhang Xiaolong said that "Shake" was more like a social experience, and he hoped to find more ways for young people to interact with others. In the closed beta version before the release of "Shake", when users "Shake", a naked statue of David would appear on the screen, which was later replaced. And the sound was always "the sound of a rifle being loaded." Zhang Xiaolong said at the time: "This voice sounds very exciting and exciting. It is very easy to use the function of shaking the phone to find people, but it is very difficult to make everyone addicted as soon as they use this function."

Everyone knows what happened later. WeChat became a national application, and official accounts, WeChat Pay, mini programs, corporate WeChat and video accounts grew on WeChat. Waiting for new businesses to support half of Tencent’s sky. Today, more than 10 years later, WeChat is still the app with the highest DAU, and has formed a perfect balance between user experience and commercialization. Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to say that it is the most successful mobile Internet product in the world, and as " Zhang Xiaolong, the "father of WeChat", also successfully became a god.

Later, Shake also evolved many functional values ​​outside of social interaction. In 2015, CCTV Spring Festival Gala cooperated with WeChat "Shake" for the first time. In just a few hours of live broadcast, this function generated a total of 11 billion interactions. It is no exaggeration to say that when "Shake" is deeply bound to the Spring Festival Gala stage, behaviors such as "Shake red envelopes", "Shake greeting cards", and "Shake blessings" are no longer purely functional uses, but have an impact on Chinese people's lifestyle. changes.

#WeChat’s popular “shake” function has become an essential interactive action for many Internet applications. Even today, you can still find different ways to play shake in many popular applications. For example, advertising pages, game pages, etc. (However, there are also some apps that infringe the user experience and make "Shake" ads notorious, and Lei Technology has reported on this).

So far, although the "Shake" function has been offline, the special behavior of "Shake" has been deeply ingrained in users' memories and has become a part of the mobile Internet era. A new way of life.

WeChat "Shake" is gone. Are Momo Detectives still alive?

WeChat’s “Shake” ended quietly, and other LBS social products are no longer popular.

On March 14, 2024, Zhiwen Group (NASDAQ: MOMO), the parent company of Momo and Tantan, released its fourth quarter and full-year financial reports for 2023. The financial report shows that Zhiwen Group's annual revenue in 2023 will be approximately 12.002 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 5.5% from 12.704 billion yuan in 2022; the net profit attributable to the parent company will be 1.958 billion yuan, an increase of 49.9% from 1.484 billion yuan in 2022.

At first glance, Zhiwen Group’s net profit is still growing, but the monthly active data of its social products is further declining. In December 2023, Tantan’s monthly active users were 13.7 million, compared with 18.4 million in the same period of 2022, a relative decrease of 4.7 million. In terms of paying users, Tantan’s number of paying users was 1.2 million, a year-on-year decrease of 500,000; Momo’s number of paying users was 7.4 million, a year-on-year decrease of 400,000.

Photo source: Momo

In that era when the mobile Internet emerged In the 1990s, LBS has become the biggest variable that distinguishes the mobile Internet from the PC Internet. Especially mobile social applications, such as MiLiao, Feidou, WeChat, and Momo, are all based on LBS. Zhiwen Group, formerly known as "Momo Technology", has grown rapidly with its unique functions such as dating, message boards, friend updates, self-destructing, and entertainment games, and has won the favor of a large number of users. Later, it further filled the industry territory through live broadcast business.

After Momo successfully acquired Tantan at a cost of 4.4 billion yuan in 2018, Momo and Tantan’s new combination covered almost all the stranger social market. The strong alliance between the industry's top two and the second in the industry has indeed given the capital market ample room for imagination in the short term. The stock price reached a maximum of 50.86 yuan per share that year. However, with the strengthening of industry supervision and the decline of the dividend period, the stock price fell to a minimum of 3.11 Yuan/share.

From a technical perspective, LBS was indeed a novelty ten years ago. But today, location services have become a basic function in social applications and are no longer novel. User needs have also changed from the original taste of early adopters and leisure to making friends with strong purpose, such as love, blind date, game partners, etc. These segmented dating tracks also have a large number of social vertical applications, which will share users to a certain extent, and will have more vertical advantages than pan-social Momo and Tantan.

Source: Analysys Analysis

In addition to the lack of freshness , although Momo and Tantan have created new additions such as "social live broadcast" and "social games" based on a single social function, the increasing difficulty of monetization has always been a big mountain weighing on their heads. The "China Social Information Marketing White Paper 2023" released by Judao Engine shows that in the context of the overall recovery of the social information marketing market, the amount of advertising and advertising for strangers' social applications will both decline in 2022.

It can be seen that pure social products can no longer meet the needs of advertisers. Perhaps only by transforming and seeking new increments can the decline of LBS social products be swept away .

Human beings are always lonely, and there is still great potential for socializing with strangers

WeChat "Shake" was the first to exit, and It does not mean that socializing with strangers has been abandoned by the times. In the view of Lei Technology, there are still subdivided areas worth exploring in the social field.

##Source: Analysys Analysis

As can be seen from the picture above, most of the user portraits of Stranger Social are medium and high-end consumers in first- and second-tier cities, and the proportion of users in lower-tier markets is not high. When the high-end gameplay of socializing with strangers encounters a bottleneck, it may be a good choice to actively explore the sinking market. Just like Pinduoduo in the e-commerce industry and Kuaishou in the short video industry, sinking into the market has brought them unexpected gains.

Source: Analysys Analysis

The same goes for socializing with strangers , as of December 2022, the number of active users of sinking dating reached 50.872 million, an increase of 63.2% compared to the same period last year. The overall user base is still growing. This is mainly due to the continued growth of the demand for marriage and love among singles. In response to the new social needs of young people in small towns, leading social applications may consider deploying lower-market applications and building a richer product matrix to seek new monetization opportunities.

Written at the end

The "Shake" function has made a lot of contributions to the growth of WeChat users. Although few people will use this function in the later period, "Shake" is definitely an indelible innovative function in mobile social applications. After all, it has affected the lifestyle of Chinese people to a certain extent.

It is worth noting that WeChat’s application of LBS will not be shaken with the disappearance of the “Shake” function. In the "Nearby" column of the discovery page, we can still see many location-based food, travel, and entertainment services. In the future, WeChat will definitely combine LBS to create more features to enhance user experience.

If WeChat cancels the "Shake" function, it is to accumulate strength to explore new directions such as video accounts. Then what the remaining players on the track will face is an increasingly sluggish stock market. The decline in the original market size and the impact of other vertical social applications. How will Momo and Tantan promote LBS social networking, and whether they can create a A new combination of "social?" In the future, Lei Technology will pay close attention to industry trends and bring you the latest reports.

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