What do 571 million users do on QQ?
2024-08-16
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What do 571 million users do on QQ?
This is a question surrounding the current situation and future of QQ after Tencent released its second quarter financial report for 2024. The financial report shows that QQ has 571 million monthly active accounts on mobile terminals, a 3% increase from the previous month.
After 25 years of trials and tribulations, QQ still maintains a vigorous development momentum, and the scale of users is the best explanation. In the past 25 years, social networking has always been an important track in the Internet arena, and many entrants regard it as a basic source of traffic. Native social products continue to improve their functions, and some vertical products with strong tool attributes, such as listening to music and editing photos, have also added social functions, which shows the degree of competition.
When we ask QQ about user behavior, we are actually trying to understand how the relationship between users and products will change, as well as the deepest thoughts on products and features.
Moving bricks, not moving bricks
Many people may not chat on QQ, but they certainly work on QQ. According to incomplete statistics, a group of users over 35 years old use QQ as an important office tool.
They are often practitioners in the fields of finance, education, and design. Transferring files, videos, screenshots, and group files are all their high-frequency application functions, and the reasons are very consistent - "transfers very quickly", "can be saved for a long time", "screenshots are very practical", etc.
The functional attributes of these tools are not difficult to access, but they are widely used by users. The reason is that QQ makes them lightweight and sophisticated.
Take screenshots as an example. People usually use one product to take screenshots first, and then use another product to mosaic, add watermarks, or save to desktop before forwarding, etc. However, using QQ's "Screenshot" function, you can directly select "Watermark" or "Pin to Desktop", etc., and it can be done in one stop.
Useful functions help users to easily get work done. At the same time, in terms of life and entertainment, QQ continues to provide customized tools, allowing users to easily be themselves in the digital world.
As early as 2003, QQ launched "QQ Show", which became popular all over the Internet. Compared with the real world, QQ helped everyone have a virtual avatar image on the Internet for the first time, which made it easier to express themselves in the virtual community and gain greater pleasure and satisfaction. Subsequently, "QQ Show" continued to upgrade and evolved into "QQ Centimeter Show", allowing virtual images to appear in more scenes. Now, it has been upgraded to "Super QQ Show", and the 3D virtual image has aroused everyone's imagination of online virtual social interaction.
Not only that, QQ albums are filled with memories of youth; customized QQ logos are used during special occasions; and QQ levels are "compared" with netizens from time to time... It can be said that QQ allows everyone to have more possibilities in the Internet space, to communicate and interact with each other, and to express themselves authentically and happily.
This is the state of "being yourself easily" that QQ strives to create for users. It is a starting point for more functions such as "Super QQ Show", "QQ Short Video", "Tencent Channel" and so on, which users can use to create a more colorful life.
Based on insights into user needs, QQ has strong social attributes and efficient tool value. These comparative advantages of QQ are becoming increasingly prominent in the fierce competition.
Find fun and find a partner
During the Paris Olympics, QQ had one more user story.
The "Win the Battle of France" channel has gathered a large number of sports fans. Their purpose is simple: to synchronize the game situation in real time in the group and express their opinions on the performance of athletes, the trend of medal counts, etc. If they are in the mood, they will also exchange skills with former national table tennis players in the channel. The atmosphere is extremely lively.
Some people call this phenomenon "interest-based social networking." It has become one of the main directions of many social products, which regard interest scenarios as incremental, use them to attract new users and achieve growth.
For QQ, the thinking horizon is broader. In the 25 years of development, QQ has accumulated a special relationship chain. In addition to real-life relationships, common interests and hobbies, topics, opinions, identities, etc. are also the bonds that maintain each other. They find like-minded people online, and then maintain communication and deepen understanding by adding QQ numbers, establishing QQ groups, etc. QQ regards this as "users' passion."
Since like-minded people form a circle, they will inevitably face a problem: how should the organizer of the circle (i.e. the group owner) organize, mobilize and manage everyone? What can the circle members (i.e. the group friends) get from the circle, how can they communicate effectively, etc., in order to ensure the orderly operation of the circle.
The "Tencent Channel", upgraded from the "QQ Channel", is such a large-scale experiment to solve the problem. To a large extent, it is answering the question "what kind of community should we build?"
As a community, Tencent Channel hopes to help users find groups for their passions and discover people who share the same interests. For users, it can produce a "20-minute park experience" and bring them spiritual happiness and fulfillment by joining the channel.
To achieve this state, we need not only good infrastructure but also a good community atmosphere. Tencent’s financial report disclosed the relevant practices of the “Tencent Channel”.
Currently, Tencent Channels has included many channels such as games, campus, ACG, sports, knowledge, etc. Each channel has functions such as posting, discussion groups, live broadcasts and schedules. Channel owners have customizable tools for management, and users can interact through text, pictures and live broadcasts, and even create their own exclusive channels.
What is more important is the community atmosphere and values.
Take the fan art of the second dimension, for example. In the "Tencent Channel", many masters have worked hard to create amazing works, which is a kind of learning and reference for many users. At the same time, everyone can easily share their own works. Even if they are just a few strokes and their level may not be high, they don't have to worry about being criticized. On the contrary, they can get encouragement and guidance from many like-minded people. This relaxed and pleasant atmosphere is the main tone of the "Tencent Channel" and also the difference.
There are many ways for users to join the "Tencent Channel". In addition to QQ, users can also join through WeChat and game applications.
The exploration has just begun, but the path is clear - from users to users.
Deal with the inconveniences in life
A good product can often help users solve some pain points in life.
This sentence also applies to QQ, and the QQ parent-teacher group is an example.
For Ms. Li, a high school class teacher, the QQ parent-school group is her official channel for maintaining communication with parents and students after class. It conveys school and class information in a timely manner and can also quickly obtain feedback from everyone.
After each get out of class, she is used to uploading group files and sharing the courseware in the group, urging students to review what they have learned. Once there is an important event, she will post information in the "Group Announcement" and initiate a "Topic" to invite parents and students to participate in the discussion. Sometimes, in order to come up with the best solution, she will also initiate a "Group Voting" to find out everyone's true thoughts through anonymous voting.
These are silently affecting her relationship with students and parents, not only improving communication efficiency but also enhancing class cohesion.
In fact, the QQ home-school group was created when Beijing was hit by severe smog in 2015. At the time, teachers and parents were worried about the impact of smog on children's health, so they thought of letting students take classes and assign homework at home through QQ groups. After the experience, it received rave reviews, and QQ focused on school scenes based on user feedback, and continued to upgrade and enrich functions.
For QQ, it is more of a social demand than a user demand. The biggest difference between them is that we should not simply emphasize the innovation of product functions, but focus on how to maximize the social value of product functions.
In the school scenario, not delaying children's classes and allowing them to absorb knowledge well is the priority. In the development history of QQ, there are many similar cases, and there is never a lack of such background.
Since 2009, QQ has been paying attention to the needs of visually impaired users and continuously promoting barrier-free transformation. Mobile QQ is one of the first apps in China to support barrier-free features, and has realized more than 3,000 barrier-free features, including barrier-free expressions, OCR image text extraction, and voiceprint adding friends. In view of the usage habits of the elderly, QQ has launched screen sharing, font enlargement, text message reading and other functions, and specially added a care mode to comprehensively improve the elderly-friendly experience.
Nowadays, QQ parent-school groups have become a standard for communication between schools and parents. What people comment most is not that a specific function is useful, but that "we can all get in touch with each other if there is any situation" and "I can find the teacher quickly".
The pace of change in the digital world is overwhelming.
571 million users are active on QQ, which is like a phenomenal user social landscape.
In this landscape, time is passing, users are changing, needs are changing, scenarios are changing, and choices are increasing. But the path remains constant: where are the scenarios of user needs, what are the digital tools that meet their needs, and how to create maximum value for them.
This is the starting point and destination of thinking.
(This article is from The Paper. For more original information, please download the "The Paper" APP)
