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Text/Chen Feng

Editor/Midnight

Meet Liu Yifei, ask the founder of UC to send me a car, get a 20-year online disk membership, ask Hou Yi to shoot down the working day, ask the God of Wealth to send me gold...

If you had a choice, which of the above wishes would you most like to realize?

Let me tell you another good news: there is a choice, if you make a wish, it will really come true.

Recently, UC Browser is about to celebrate its 20th anniversary. At this time, UC launched the "UC20th Anniversary Netizens Wish List" activity in order to give benefits to its users. UC netizens who always love to make fun of things and know how to make fun of things immediately joined in the wishing -

As of August 21, one million users have entered the event page through the [Wish List] on UC Browser and can make a "wish", that is, vote. UC will draw a lucky user for the top five wishes and help them realize their wishes.

Of course, some impossible dreams should not be pursued, such as letting Dayu manage wages, letting Yue Lao suffer the pain of love, etc.

But there are still chances for some wishes if you strive for them, such as receiving gold from the God of Wealth, getting a 20-year membership of UC Cloud Disk, taking a car from UC founder He Xiaopeng, and getting a full set of UC peripherals.

Now, netizens on UC can no longer sit still.

Some netizens said, "Between work and advancement, I chose to make a wish on UC"; some netizens directly tagged He Xiaopeng in the comment section, saying "If you give me a car, my dad will not be Lei Jun in the future"; some people are already thinking about whether they can breathe when they see Liu Yifei...

UC users have been very creative and nominated many practical wishes. They also called on the official to realize some of their small wishes: "I want to drive a Xiaopeng car, install a Gree air conditioner in the car, call Liu Yifei with the phone given by UC, and then take the gold given by the God of Wealth to travel with my family!" Some netizens even made a wish, "I hope the God of Wealth will drive a Xiaopeng car and bring Liu Yifei here. I don't know if it can be realized. If it can, I will drive a Xiaopeng car to the mountainous area to donate money and supplies."

You don't have to be surprised by this. In the past twenty years, this kind of "lively", "lively" and "fun" has already become the way UC gets along with its 600 million users.

To some extent, this is why, UC has had a group of loyal users who have never left 20 years after its establishment.

Behind this, an interesting question is, why after 20 years, UC is getting younger and younger? And is getting better and better at playing with users?

UC Browser,

How to become the user’s “happy home”?

"Today is the 4348th day I have used UC. During this period, it has carried too many ups and downs and joys for me. From the moment I started using it, other browsers are basically just decorations. It carries my memories and emotions, which cannot be replaced by anything else."

In the above-mentioned "UC20th Anniversary Netizens Wish List" event, a user wrote this.

There are many users like this who have used UC Browser for ten years or even longer.

For example, one netizen said that around 2008, smartphones had not yet been widely promoted. At that time, he was using Nokia E63 and E72 smartphones and had started using UC Browser. Now, 16 years have passed, and UC Browser is still his must-have mobile phone software.

This netizen said that UC has been with him for 16 years, and he has witnessed every bit of UC's development, watching UC become better and more convenient to use step by step.

It is not difficult to find that in the past twenty years, although the external environment, user background, mobile phones and other smart terminal products faced by UC Browser have undergone tremendous changes, one thing has remained unchanged - users love to use it.

We also see that for many users, UC may no longer be just a tool application, but has subtly become a way of life for them.

An interesting question behind this is how did UC Browser do this?

Before answering this question, let us review another activity initiated by UC.

At the beginning of this year, UC Browser launched the first "UC Netizen Annual List" selection activity, focusing on the popular topics of "Goddess List", "Money-Burning List", "Poet List", "Novel Masterpiece List", "Drama List" and "Basketball List", and invited UC netizens to vote online to select the annual exclusive list.

Image source: UC Browser official WeChat public account

In addition to participating in the voting, users can also add their own favorite choices through the "Nomination Options" and interact with other netizens in the "Explain Why You Voted" area.

After UC built this "stage", we saw that netizens on UC also started to "do something active".

While complaining about the "money-burning" projects in their lives, they also shared their love and persistence in their interests and expressed their attitude towards life.

For example, one netizen said, "If you ask me to get up at 8 o'clock to eat, I may not be able to get up, but if you ask me to get up at 8 o'clock to go fishing, I will get up at 6 o'clock." Another netizen said that everyone is fishing, but the way they play is different. Some people don't really want to catch fish at all. "For example, I just want to sit by the lake, sometimes I just cast a rod without bait, and do it for an afternoon, just looking at the water, not thinking about anything, and feeling relaxed."

However, netizens on UC are not only good at making jokes and making complaints. On the "Poet List", many netizens have transformed themselves and started writing poems.

For example, the following two poems were written by netizens.

"Auspicious days come all the time, and golden years come every year. The old year was not satisfactory in every way, but the new year will be satisfactory in every way." "The old year was not satisfactory in every way, but the wind and snow made us stronger. The mountains are full of pearls, and we step into a new world in one day."

Of course, netizens who cannot write poems are not discouraged. Instead, they are inspired to create and win.

For example, one netizen wrote a poem as follows: I wanted to recite a poem to answer your question, but I don’t have enough knowledge. I will read thousands of books again one day and then discuss with you who is better.

You will find that from the "UC User Annual List" at the beginning of the year to the current "UC20th Anniversary User Wish List", it is difficult to simply define UC users with one or a few words.

They "love to play" and "know how to play". They will invest in their own interests and hobbies, even if they complain about "burning money"; they will occasionally have wild imaginations, or write a catchy and well-balanced poem, or think about what to pay attention to when meeting Liu Yifei and Gao Yuanyuan, or share their own ways of hiding their private money, such as hiding it in the stock market, so that no one can find it, let alone others.

Their comments, interactions and sharing on UC actually reflect their lifestyle and attitude towards life.

UC's main user group is the 80s and 90s generation aged 25-40. They call themselves the "backbone youth", that is, they are sandwiched between the "front wave" and the "back wave", with old people above them and young people below them. They are the "middle generation" and the "backbone force". Most of them may be in the most stressful stage in universal cognition, but they can still continue to love life after seeing the truth of life.

In this healthy user interaction ecosystem, these talented, funny and loving UC users have actually regarded UC as their "happy home".

From basic tools to "treasure box",

What makes a good browser?

What should a browser that users love look like?

The answer to this question is different at different historical stages.

The reason is that from the PC Internet era to the mobile Internet era, and then to the further enrichment of the mobile Internet content ecosystem, the core traffic entrance of the Chinese Internet is changing, and users' usage habits and demands for browsers are also changing.

To make a simple comparison, a statistical report from iResearch Consulting in 2014 showed that the five most common purposes for users when using browsers are: searching for URL navigation, reading news and information, reading novels, information retrieval and browsing, and online shopping.

But by 2023, the main purpose of users using browsers has undergone a major shift to watching short videos, reading news, listening to music, browsing computer websites/web page information, watching online videos (variety shows, movies and TV series), etc.

Image source: 2023 China Search Engine Industry Research Report

In other words, compared with the early days, users' demand for browsers continues to show a trend of diversification and refinement.

During this process, the biggest challenge for third-party browsers is how to keep up with changes in user needs in terms of functionality and experience while being a good basic search tool.

It is worth noting that for any browser, this may not be an easy process of "making miracles happen with great effort", but requires continuous insight into changes in user needs, continuous evolution, and maintaining consistency in functional iteration and user experience upgrades.

From this perspective, UC Browser, which has been iterating and evolving in the browser market for 20 years and has accumulated 600 million users, is representative to a certain extent.

Looking back, as early as the Symbian era, UC Browser has been innovating functions and upgrading experience around user pain points.

Let me give you some examples.

A core pain point for many netizens in the early days was the high data traffic charges. At that time, most websites were mainly graphic and text content, and pictures accounted for the bulk of the traffic.

At that time, UC was already able to compress large images, and at the same time, through transcoding technology, it made PC pages better adaptable to mobile phones, reformatted the pages, blocked messy information, made the page information more concise, and further helped users save traffic.

For example, many netizens were used to watching NBA live broadcasts on their mobile phones, but for a long time, users could only return to the site and re-enter it. At that time, UC Browser launched a timed automatic refresh function, which simplified the user's usage process and allowed everyone to understand the game situation in real time.

In addition, UC Browser also made improvements to address the pain point of slow Internet speeds for users. In terms of novel reading experience, it further optimized the user interaction experience through functions such as "pre-reading", "automatic pagination", and "page turning with volume keys", etc.

To a certain extent, it is the above-mentioned continuous improvement actions around users' core pain points that enabled UC Browser to gain a good reputation among users in its early days.

We also see that UC Browser is still undergoing new changes today - based on the current users' segmented and diverse needs in search, novel reading, short dramas, online storage, etc., UC is continuing to evolve.

In the past two years, many users have become fond of watching short dramas. For this reason, UC Browser launched the "Short Drama" channel in the first half of this year, which now includes high-quality short dramas of various themes such as urban, ancient costumes, time travel, war gods, super rich, and sweet pets. In this channel, users can also learn about the latest short drama rankings and trends in real time based on the hot list and new drama list.

UC Browser Short Drama Channel, source: UC Browser App

For users who like to read novels, after entering the "Book Famine Square" of UC Browser, they can see the treasure book list recommended by real users, and they can also participate in recommending books, so that everyone can say goodbye to book famine and avoid stepping on landmines.

In fact, today's UC Browser has many such functions and experience upgrades.

UC Super Player now has multiple picture quality options, including Ultimate Vision and AI Picture Quality. It also launched VR viewing, 0.5-5x speed playback, super screen projection and other functions.

UC Cloud Disk's file transfer assistant now supports up to 40G large file transfers, with unlimited upload and download speeds, and online file decompression can support up to 12G;

UC Cloud Disk's cloud photo album now supports searches based on 144 categories, including faces, locations, documents, food, pets, etc. It also supports cross-searching with multiple keywords, etc.

UC Browser's ability to continue to evolve stems from its underlying technical strength.

Today, UC Browser uses the U4 5.0 kernel, making users' consumption experience of UC's public domain content faster, more stable and safer.

In summary, based on the above, it is precisely based on the underlying technical strength and timely and accurate insight into user needs that UC Browser has been able to continue to evolve with users at the center, and has evolved into a "easy-to-use browser".

Where will UC break through next?

Looking back, UC has roughly gone through the following iterative path in the past 20 years:

Based on the underlying technology, it continuously iterates functions and upgrades experience around the ever-changing user needs, making itself easier to use first.

Based on user operation, it is more free, inclusive and open, allowing users to be more than just users. Through innovative activities such as "UC20th Anniversary Netizens' Wish List" and "UC Netizens' Annual List", it truly plays with users. Under this lively and harmonious user interaction ecology, it makes users more "love to use".

But UC obviously doesn't want to stop there.

The author @陈皮话梅糖 of UC Story Club is quite famous in the author circle. She has only been writing for UC Story Club for more than 4 months, but she has earned more than 200,000 yuan in royalties. The highest amount she earned before tax that month was six figures.

But few people know that before writing articles for UC Story Club, @陈皮话梅糖 suffered from severe postpartum depression. In order to relieve her emotions, she chose to try to write short stories. What she didn't expect was that she earned more than 30,000 yuan in royalties for this novel, which was written 5 months after giving birth. In UC Story Club, there are many cases like her who have found new possibilities in life.

To some extent, this is a microcosm of UC Browser's continuous expansion of its user value and experience. UC hopes to continue to provide users with more diverse values ​​and choices, and provide a better community ecosystem, so as to better accompany users through the next 20 years, or even longer.

In fact, over the past 20 years, UC Browser and its users have been in a mutually beneficial growth process. User feedback has been an important support for UC's continuous evolution and iteration. UC's upgrades and a more free, inclusive and open community ecosystem have also made users more loyal and sticky.

As we mentioned above, among the 600 million users of UC, many are loyal users who have used UC Browser for ten years or even longer. During this process, UC users have been growing and changing, and UC Browser has also been growing and changing. Time is the witness of their growth and also gives them unlimited possibilities and potential.

A netizen has been a fan of UC for 20 years. From the earliest Symbian browser to the present, UC Browser is a must-install app every time he changes his mobile phone.

The netizen wrote: "Twenty years have passed, and my support for UC remains the same as always. I still remember the original slogan: no matter how much I give, it is not as good as understanding you."