According to the news announced by Zhang Xiaolong in wechat open class on December 28, 2016, the long-awaited wechat mini program will be officially launched on January 9, 2017. However, as of 18:00 on January 8, wechat still did not provide official answers to the specific online time, search function Settings and unified entrance of wechat mini programs, which are of great concern to people. Developers, who have been preparing for this for a long time, are still waiting with trepidation…
Cheng Hao, the founder of the “Morning Calendar”, spent the New Year’s day of 2017 in anxiety and confusion.
This sentiment probably started a few days ago. On December 28, 2016 WeChat public class, the father of WeChat xiao-long zhang took nearly an hour and a half about the ins and outs of small programs related to and announced on January 9, 2017, WeChat this new “ambition plan” will be officially launched.
In September 2016, Cheng Hao’s tool company “Morning Calendar” became one of the first 200 companies to test mini programs. Although before that have heard a lot of “wind”, but after watching the live broadcast on December 28, when he found that the “long by qr code identification of small programs” entrance way has also been WeChat “block”, or surprised: “we thought we have to imagine the worst outcome, but I didn’t think WeChat or may have blocked off all the online guide.”
No unified entrance, no push function, no app store, no sharing of moments, limited search function… This is Zhang Xiaolong in this public appearance for micro channel small program set “limit” and “threshold”, in these restrictions, people can outline the micro channel for small program positioning and play. For many entrepreneurs and developers who once thought that small programs could become the next “flow bonus” entrance, this speech was undoubtedly a basin of cold water.
The development threshold is very low small program can be seen as the subscription number after wechat for all people to draw the starting line. But now it seems that success on this new circuit may not be as easy as expected.
(In the wechat open class on December 28, 2016, Zhang Xiaolong fully explained the origin and origin of small programs for the first time)
Traffic acquisition distress
In the Wechat open class on December 28, Zhang Xiaolong once said bluntly when explaining small programs to the outside world: “If what you want is flow dividend, then it is a pity that there is no such dividend.”
This is hardly sudden bad news. After wechat opened its first batch of internal test lists in September last year, all the information about small programs has stirred the sensitive nerves of entrepreneurs. Since then, people have gradually learned from the wechat release that small program is a completely different product from the subscription number system. Compared to the subscription number, it has more restrictions and is very limited in form. According to Zhang xiaolong’s interpretation and vision, the small program will be more like the “resurrection” of the corporate web page in the Mobile Internet era – it will not bother users, only when they need to appear. Wechat wants you to “have to walk” after using a small program.
But despite this, for many entrepreneurs, wechat small program or a cake full of temptation. In the current traffic shortage, wechat, with 700 million users, is obviously a huge platform that people can not look down on. Even if the opportunity is slim, many people dare not miss the opportunity to “start again”.
“Our products are really inseparable from wechat, and now wechat is going to have an ecosystem so similar to the APP, so the team has to lean on it or go against the trend.” The day of the official launch of the small program is approaching, Cheng Hao believes that he has quickly adjusted his mentality, and after December 28, the same adjustment has been made to the product strategy of the Morning Calendar team.
The “Morning Calendar” launched in 2015 was first started by a wechat public number, and the development of the APP has been completed. The highlight of the product is the ability to take advantage of the strong social nature of wechat to share schedules with wechat friends. However, since the mini program does not set a unified entrance, it is not wise to copy the functions of the APP or wechat official account. In the team of only 10 people in the morning calendar, several developers have developed a number of small programs according to different application scenarios, such as meeting reminders, course reminders and so on.
However, after Zhang xiaolong’s speech, Cheng Hao immediately lowered the priority of the development of the “calendar” function, which used to be the main feature of “Morning Calendar”. “Now, this kind of 2 c pure calendar function might not be able to rapid accumulation of users, unless we spend a lot of experience to find offline entry, otherwise the conversion rate is not high. I can only tell you the initiative to search the function. But so far, we don’t know how search mechanism.”
As of January 8, 2017, the day before the official launch of micro channel small program, where is the unified entrance of small program, whether users can directly find a small program through search, how to set the notification list of small program, how to jump between micro channel public number and small program…… These questions that developers care about are still not definitively answered. The only thing that is certain is that the mini-program, which uses qr code scanning as its biggest entry point, will be a direct boon to apps that have a strong connection to the offline scene.
The mindset of some developers has become fatalistic, while some entrepreneurs who already have a steady stream of APP traffic tend to wait and see.
Cheng hao chose “don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” while Liu Zhipeng, founder of West Window Poetry, another developer, said that just because wechat now strictly controls the online entry of miniprograms doesn’t mean that the rules won’t change slowly.
“After listening to Zhang Xiaolong’s speech feeling a little bit by pit, but since our small procedures have been made, wait until the 9th release to see it again.” Liu zhipeng is aware that west Window poetry, a purely online “light application”, may encounter difficulties in promotion, but he is optimistic that the small program may inspire him to develop new businesses related to offline, thus opening a “new window”.
“We have to embrace change. We don’t have to be afraid.” Liu Zhipeng said.
The opportunity to go offline
After December 28, when some are sad, others will be happy.
In 2012, Zhang Xiaolong said in his moments that the TWO-DIMENSIONAL code is the biggest entrance to the mobile Internet. The idea was met with a lot of skepticism at the time. But four years later, when he announced that scanning a QR code was the primary way users accessed the widget, the claim finally began to gain traction.
Behind the TWO-DIMENSIONAL code is wechat’s ambition to “connect everything”, such a decision also directly leads to the small program’s first batch of a large amount of traffic will come from the diversion of offline enterprises. Scenarioized applications have become the easiest way for small programs to break through, which gives those developers facing b-side users a lot of hope.
Zhao jiuzhou is now very happy with his original choice. The company he founded in 2014 has been focusing on H5 Web-based applications. At the beginning of 2016, in the last wechat open class, Zhang xiaolong announced the small program’s predecessor, the application of the relevant news, he finally smelled the arrival of the opportunity, and Quick Mobile quickly transformed into a small program for wechat outsourcing development company.
“We’ve been frustrated that the H5 has been so lukewarm, and now a giant is doing it. We have no choice but to go all in.” Because the basic logic of small program and H5 original light application, cloud application basic logic is not very different, are based on Web pages of light application, coupled with Quick mobile has been B end customers as their main target users, zhang Xiaolong revealed in the speech let Zhao Jiuzhou feel very excited. He has identified tourism, government affairs, medical care, culture and entertainment, education and training, and retail as the main technology exporters of Fast Mobile, and will launch outsourcing technology products developed by the company for offline enterprises on January 10.
“Many investors feel that our direction is not as cutting-edge as AI and VR, and it is ok to invest or not to invest, but now the attitude has changed.” Zhao Jiuzhou said. Also get popular and xiao-long zhang in the WeChat public class “anointed” offline restaurant reservation service position, according to the imagination of xiao-long zhang, user reach the offline a restaurant meal, do not need to download the APP of the restaurant, only need to sweep it in a restaurant in the qr code, then you can in the restaurant little program queue or order. And according to industry sources who spoke to Geek Park, the valuations of a number of startups offering such services have doubled since December 28.
For developers who don’t have the advantage of a natural offline portal, building their own portal in the physical world is a major challenge.
More people have started to think about how to activate a requirement for a scene that didn’t exist before, which is almost a problem they have never systematically thought about before. Wandoujia founder Wang Junyu’s second venture, a new project called Light Mang, is a fine reading product. From the beginning, the team regarded small programs as an important source of traffic. After Zhang Xiaolong’s speech, many people began to think that pure content products will not be suitable for the ecological rules set by small programs, but the light Mang team still did not give up this idea.
“For developers, it’s not a matter of thinking in terms of what’s already there and just applying it to a widget, it’s a matter of thinking about what I can do with this entry mode and usage scenario.” Fan Huaiyu, co-founder of Light Mang, told Geek Park. At the same time, he and his team started thinking about ways that users could access applets offline: “For example, when a user walks to a cafe today and finds our QR code on the table, maybe you can scan into our mini program and see a magazine of interest related to coffee, or share the notes of reading in the magazine with others in the group through group sharing.”
In any case, many of these lessons no longer apply to the emerging ecosystem. But wechat has set the new rules of the game, and entrepreneurs who want to make a difference in this new arena seem to have no choice.
What is Wechat thinking about small programs?
According to small program entrepreneurs in close contact with wechat, from the beginning of 2016 announced the application of the plan, in nearly a year, the wechat team for the application to small program product form after many discussions and deformation. The wechat team also submitted a number of proposals for traffic entry, search methods and other functions, but most of them were denied by Zhang Xiaolong.
So, what kind of future is wechat bearing in building such a small program ecosystem?
“If you make a subtle observation, from the beginning of 2016, to the public test list of 200 in September, to the public test and then to the public lecture, you will find that wechat’s word for small programs has been changing, why did it take a year before the official launch of small programs? “This is obviously a very slow move, so I assume that wechat’s thinking has evolved.” In the eyes of Achan, founder of the Possible Academy, the goal of wechat mini-programs may be to perfect or replace less-than-perfect service numbers.
There is no doubt that the emergence of wechat subscription number launched in 2012 directly spawned the prosperity of content entrepreneurship, while the subsequent service number launched for enterprises did not successfully complete the mission of connecting offline. Xiao-long zhang in this public class spent a lot of time to reiterate WeChat as a high efficiency of the meaning of “tool”, it seems to be to a certain extent, defines the applet in the role of the tool system: online under the condition of traffic tend to be saturated, WeChat could expect little program fulfill the task of connecting the physical world, and inspire greater business value.
In his speech, Zhang Xiaolong also mentioned a scene that is not far away from us: the platform after smart phone may be glasses, and in the glasses system, the installation program is not long, and the application program is wherever the glasses see. For example, when the glasses see the light, there will be a switch above the light, sweep to the park gate, there will be a ticket system. “It should be ubiquitous, yet accessible all the time.”
This makes people have to suspect that the offline TWO-DIMENSIONAL code as the main entrance to the small program ecology, it is likely that wechat for the next operating platform to make advance preparation. Cheng Hao concluded: “a lot of people think wechat may do smart phone operating system, but in fact maybe they are already thinking about the layout of the next smart platform, if it really comes to that day, wechat can be transplanted to VR or AR glasses with a mature ecosystem of small programs.”
If this seems like an irreversible future, there seems little reason for developers to miss out. But the growth and maturity of an ecological need time, including Cheng Hao, Zhao Jiuzhou, a number of developers believe that the small program will be officially launched on the 9th May present a “low open high go” state, but in the future for a period of time may become a force that is not easy to ignore.
They prefer to look at the critical time window within six months: “It is expected that 2017 will be the year in which those who devote themselves to studying the rules will find their place in the ecosystem and even create a variety of business models, as was the case with subscription.”
(Editing by Wang Wei photo by Internet)