This screenshot shows the time of August 17, 2012, which is the same day when the WeChat public platform was officially launched.
Yang Maoji, the product manager of the WeChat public platform at that time, introduced it in his public account “Mao’s Life Circleâ€. “At that time, there was no strategic layout, business thinking, open platform, and ecological chain...â€. Even the "small individual, but also has its own brand" phrase that is known to everyone is also determined later.
On August 17, 2016, this WeChat product, which was not carefully prepared to go online, ushered in its 4th birthday. Now it has become the main source of most Chinese people's daily reading content. Business owners provide users with an important channel for service, and even gradually become the entrance to corporate management. The WeChat public platform is increasingly rich in functional services, and the products are becoming more and more complex.
From the perspective of product definition, the WeChat public platform is a brand-new service platform for individuals, businesses and organizations to provide business services and user management capabilities. Around these three types of services, the public platform provides three major account types: "subscription number", "service number" and "enterprise number".
The great success of WeChat at the mobile end has brought massive amounts of user and traffic resources to the WeChat public platform, and has also brought value to the operations of the public number (subscription number, service number). Many companies and individuals began to engage in the operation of the public number. After several years of market education, subscription numbers and service numbers have become the standard for content creators and startup companies.
In order to meet the ever-increasing user demand, the WeChat public platform has continued to iterate around the functional renewal of these three major types of accounts over the past few years and gradually evolved into the current “all-encompassing†package. Looking at the WeChat public platform history update system announcement, we can clearly understand the development of the WeChat public platform in the past four years.
Improvement of basic functions
On March 9, 2013, the public platform announced the first system announcement and launched the “Customer Service Areaâ€. Problems such as the account number, mass distribution of pictures and texts, the use of functions of corporate public platforms, and the issue of public number authentication began to have official answers.
Later, WeChat gradually opened up the use of various public platform interfaces, including voice recognition, customer service interfaces, OAuth2.0 web page authorization, access to user geographic information interfaces, user grouping, and other advanced interface functions. Since then, the WeChat public platform has also enriched important applications such as WeChat payment, Wechat card coupons, micro-stores, and enterprise numbers.
According to recent news, WeChat will launch "Application Number" during the year. For the application number, Zhang Xiaolong said:
"The service number is far from our expectations. We are discussing a new form, called application number. The user pays attention to the application number, just like installing an app."
The emergence of the WeChat application number will partially alleviate the problems of the development of the "iOS, Android" dual system while meeting the application requirements, and reduce the developer's development costs. For WeChat, the emergence of application numbers will greatly enrich the service capabilities of the WeChat platform and enhance the stickiness between users and WeChat.
(The difference between application number and subscription number, service number)
New attempt for business gameplay
In the past few years, WeChat's liquidity has been questioned by people in the industry.
After the introduction of micro-stores, Wechat card coupons, WeChat membership cards, public platform red envelopes, and traffic owners, advertisers, wide-point communication (WeChat advertising system) and other service methods, the ability to monetize the WeChat public platform is not allowed in the entire WeChat system. Xiao Yan.
With the service number, the WeChat public platform has tried a series of O2O games, such as WeChat with Wi-Fi, stores launching “near people†and other means to bring users closer to businesses and businesses.
However, WeChat's goal is not only to change the existing business model, but also hope to become a unified entrance to the future business.
In March 2016, the WeChat work platform officially opened beta testing of the “sweeping†function. WeChat will open commodity bar code connection capabilities. After the brand launches this feature, it can independently edit the product homepage, maintain product information, provide product-related services, and perform user management and data management. This means that WeChat will be able to more easily connect brands and consumers, and use WeChat scans to complete the networking of offline product data.
Platform Operation Management
From 2013 to 2014, WeChat began to usher in the peak of the first wave of user growth. More and more media and enterprises have realized the business value behind WeChat and began to invest in human and material resources to operate, hoping to be the first to circle users. In the process of circling users, the corresponding marketing tools emerge in an endless stream, including inducing sharing, rumor spreading, and praising. For some time, many media and self-media criticized WeChat's inaction at the level of content regulation.
Under such conditions, the WeChat public platform successively issued the “announcement of clean-up campaigns†and “announcement of reorganization-induced sharing and induced attention†in June and December 2014. WeChat said that it will clean up and standardize the "Ji-Zi" and induced sharing, rumors, and pornographic content. Serious offenders will be treated as seals.
In addition, as an important content creation platform, the public platform cannot avoid plagiarism. In response to this phenomenon, the WeChat public platform has launched "original statements" and "plagiarism reports" and other functions, focusing on safeguarding the rights of content creators. In order to further encourage content creators to produce high-quality content, WeChat launched features such as "Public No. Top" and "Rewards." The goal is to allow authors to focus more on content creation. Some time ago, Internet rumors WeChat will launch the subscription number "pay subscription" function. However, it was eventually stopped by WeChat for no apparent reason. All in all, these measures are enough to see WeChat's support and encouragement of original content.
Integration of mobile and web pages
As a product of the mobile Internet era, WeChat's main battle platform has always been on the mobile phone side. However, from the perspective of the development of the past few years, WeChat has been trying to integrate with the PC side, mainly the following five key updates:
1. In February 2015, the third party platform of WeChat public number began to support JS-SDK access, and the third party platform can help the public number to develop and implement webpage services through the JS-SDK after obtaining the public license.
2. WeChat launches PC and Mac clients. Users scan the QR code through the mobile phone to log in to the account PC.
3. The public platform publishes the WeChat web developer tool. WeChat will open web-based tools to web developers to implement the access of web pages in the WeChat on the PC and Mac;
4. In January 2016, WeChat web design style library was released. The WeChat team launched WeUI, a web design style library that helps web developers achieve a consistent visual experience with the WeChat client.
5. Wechat JSSDK calls statistical functions to publish, which helps developers to easily view the website's traffic in the WeChat client.
In 4 years, the WeChat public platform has changed our lifestyle to a large extent. The WeChat public platform originally targeted at serving “small individuals†has grown into an omnipotent Big Mac platform. In 2016, the WeChat public platform is advancing towards the overall goal of “Connecting Everythingâ€, and the future WeChat public platform will also give us more possibilities.