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As a fossil Internet product with a history of 22 years, QQ still has 600 million monthly active users. This is undoubtedly an alternative in the world of updating the Internet at the iterative speed of days. After WeChat became a national social software for many years, QQ still has a considerable user stock and always occupies its own position.

QQ is an antique born in the last century, but it will always belong to this young man. Baidu index shows that QQ is more popular than WeChat in the age groups of 19 and 20-29.

The initial users of this social software were post-70s and post-80s, when they were still very young. These people have "graduated" from QQ after entering the workplace, but a new generation of young people are still "enrolled" and regard QQ as the first social software in their lives.

A user born in the Millennium regards QQ as her pure land. QQ is full of peers, only true self, no annoying job. QQ used adults to build a curtain wall for their complex world.

Ding Daoshi, a 40-year-old Internet observer, believes that people of all ages have a kind of affinity for QQ. "After all, QQ has a 20-year user relationship chain, which cannot be abandoned for a while."

Li Zecheng, a senior product manager and author of Product Awakening, believes that the current user base of QQ also includes bosses and employees of sinking small and medium-sized enterprises and traditional state-owned enterprises. In these groups, QQ has digested the sinking and long tail market that office software such as flying books and nailing can't touch.

In order to explore the people who still use QQ and the reasons behind it, we interviewed some serious QQ users, senior product managers and Internet technology observers.

Before there is a mobile phone, students have QQ first.

Li Zhongfu realized that WeChat had become the mainstream after he was admitted to graduate school this year. Most teachers only use WeChat, and students seldom want QQ friends.

He spent his middle school days in Xiamen, and the newly downloaded software of the computer equipped in the class was deleted by default when it was turned off, while QQ was pre-installed, so he developed the habit of transmitting files with QQ. "Now most middle schools in Xiamen still use computers like that."

In his observation, it is impossible to use WeChat without a mobile phone, and QQ has become the first social software used by many teenagers. My cousin, who goes to middle school at home, almost only uses QQ, and his activity is no worse than that of that year. "Using a computer to log in to WeChat requires a mobile phone. It is more convenient for middle school students to log in directly with QQ. "

His WeChat only added the takeaway shop owner and his internship colleagues, with a total of *** 100 people. Moreover, QQ has his social network since childhood and a group of classmates who have known each other for more than ten years. "Everyone is not together, but they will interact and talk."

When interviewing young people, Ding Daoshi, the former president of Speedway Research Institute, also found that young people are still more accustomed to using QQ to communicate with friends. Wechat is a product in the work scene.

An Internet product manager who has worked for 7 years believes that QQ is open, suitable for young students, and mainly socializes with acquaintances and has the style of socializing with strangers.

Students' social relations are not yet stable, let alone saturated. As gregarious people, students are more likely to socialize, and the number of people around them is stable and huge, so it is almost impossible to know the second and third relationships.

QQ recommends "people you may know" to users. These people and users have some * * * friends, or they may be in QQ group with * * *. In the personal information card, you can check your basic information and the number of friends with each other, and send an invitation to add, which meets the needs of students to "expand the list". Some students even posted an "expansion column" directly in QQ space to talk about making friends, and social enthusiasm overflowed the screen.

Young people like to explore and enjoy more possibilities, and the fancy function of QQ just meets their needs. Yao Shuo and his girlfriend keep the habit of contacting with QQ. When the postgraduate entrance examination was boring, the couple got together with QQ Xiao Bing. QQ Xiao Bing is a QQ group robot jointly developed by Microsoft Xiao Bing and Tencent QQ. "Relieve the pressure during the preparation by teasing QQ Xiao Bing." As soon as QQ launched a new function, his girlfriend was the first to tell him that the two of them tried the new function together, which has become a way for them to enhance their feelings.

Adults with stable social relations prefer the comfort zone and are suitable for the more closed WeChat. Wechat emphasizes the safety and privacy of products to users, which is related to its social responsibility, while QQ, whose products are light and social, does not promise social responsibility. If we take a game as an example, QQ is the venue and equipment, while WeChat is not only the venue and equipment, but also the referee and volunteers.

When students use QQ, they should add QQ to strangers first, exchange phone calls after they are familiar with it, and solidify in a more social way. In students' simple social interaction, the connection depends almost entirely on likes and dislikes, which is completely different from the complicated choices of adults. It is difficult to refuse to be asked for WeChat, but it is not difficult to find a reason for not having QQ.

Teenagers can find private social scenes on QQ. They communicate with their favorite friends on QQ, maintain their own small circle, and are isolated from adult society, from the pressure of their elders, and even from the pressure of their peers. Wechat "probably socializes for the sake of socializing" and is full of oppression.

Pan Luan, a senior observer in the Internet technology industry, believes that pure socialization has never been the main appeal of teenagers. When I was a child, I brought home three things after school: doing homework, turning on TV and playing computer, which respectively correspond to the three core scenes of teenagers: education, entertainment and games.

In 20 19, Li Zhongfu began to play a strategy online game, and the game groups had to communicate with each other in order to win the final victory of the season. In order to prevent criminals from using game transfer fraud, the state stipulates that QR codes are not allowed in online games, and game groups can establish QQ groups by searching group numbers.

Until he graduated from college, there were only three or four WeChat groups for online games and dozens of QQ groups. There are many multinational bosses and overseas Chinese in the group, and many people have become friends. Someone lost QQ because of the game. "People who play a lot of games basically have QQ."

The rice circle where teenagers gather is also more inclined to "support" with QQ group (cheering for idols). /kloc-Weibo, born in 1998, is a singer pursued by Yao Shuo. His fans are only over 6,543.8+0,000, and his fame is not great. On the day of album release, fans spontaneously formed a QQ group to raise funds to sell the album. In less than 10 minutes, crowdfunding raised 10000.

Most of the people in the group are still in middle school and have just entered the university for a long time, and they like the same idol. QQ is the default social software. Fans often talk about music and students' daily life in groups. "They understand each other very well and are very touched."

Wechat is side A and QQ is side B.

After going to college, young people are forced to turn to WeChat, which is an inevitable process of socialization.

Yao Shuo has a clear sense of being trapped. He doesn't like WeChat very much and often scolds WeChat junk, but he still uses it. "Socialization is definitely the most convenient one." When he graduated from college, the proportion of time spent using WeChat and QQ changed from 2:8 to 4:6.

Li Zecheng believes that two products, WeChat and QQ, meet the different requirements of different users for social interaction and communication. When designing WeChat, I deliberately avoided inheriting the design ideas of QQ and started from scratch. The argument that WeChat replaces or eliminates QQ cannot be established.

When Tencent founded WeChat, the volume of QQ was still quite huge. The intention of starting a new stove is to occupy a new social battlefield on the mobile side. Although QQ has a mobile terminal, it is compatible with the functions of PC, and it can easily complete heavy work. Moreover, many professionals think that QQ is not the software that should be used in daily work.

In the internet industry, job seekers who left QQ mailboxes were once considered unprofessional by enterprises, "thinking that this person is sick". From the mainstream and elite point of view, QQ is not a serious product and is not suitable for serious scenes.

As more and more job seekers choose to leave their mobile phones and WeChat, the importance of email gradually declines, and job seekers no longer face ridicule when they leave QQ mailbox. Driven by QQ, QQ mailbox is still the highest among mailbox products.

Li Zecheng believes that QQ already has some functions that WeChat has never surpassed for many years.

For example, QQ allows multiple independent identities, and it is common for a person to have multiple QQ numbers. If you don't use red envelopes, real-name authentication is unnecessary. QQ can also receive messages from multiple accounts on computers and mobile phones at the same time. Adults can use this to show the b side of life.

Wechat has many restrictions on multi-identity in design and does not encourage trumpet. Users can't log in to two Wechat at the same time, and they can't receive messages at all when they log out.

With QQ's multiple identities, Li Zecheng realized the separation of work and life. He is also a daily QQ user, which is shared by four QQ users. "QQ is always online."

The convenience of QQ group management has also been praised by community operators. From 20 13 to 20 16, Li Ze became a stranger community on QQ. "One person can manage a group of 500 people or 1000 people, which is very convenient."

Logs and chat records can be saved, and when group members come in and why they go out are archived, which is very convenient to retrieve. It is very convenient to query chat records on the computer, and QQ can pull out many windows. However, WeChat is based on mobile phone operation, and the search has only one screen. "Checking a chat record is really tiring."

QQ also supports content collaboration and transmission and storage of large files, which is convenient for calls and meetings. So many small and medium-sized enterprises and traditional state-owned enterprises use QQ as office software. QQ digested the sinking and long tail market that most office software such as flying books and nailing failed to touch.

The fancy design of QQ is also accepted by some adults. Li Zecheng doesn't think this is a problem. QQ on the PC side is a warm-blooded version with complete functions, and the social module on the mobile side is more friendly to use. He only uses social interaction, and everything else is manually checked. He has no interest in tribes in his early years and no QQ in his later years. "It's basically the same as it was 20 years ago, but the interface looks better."

In the final analysis, social communication software is still the user's own decision, and the essence of good or bad experience is the relationship chain and cognitive level. Whether it causes harassment depends on who sent the message, how often it is sent, and the content itself has limited influence. "If a product makes users have no autonomy and is forced to accept information every day, then users will definitely not stay long." Li Zecheng explained.

There are also young people who make the same choice. Li Zhongfu doesn't often use the new features of QQ. If there is a group fight every day, he feels harassed, so just go back. If a friend asks him to cut a knife every day, he will be hacked.

When walking in the public domain traffic of QQ, users use the same set of identities. Tik Tok is also the only software with ID identity. If you want to add a person to the Tik Tok live broadcast room, just check the homepage directly. Unless the anchor is specifically shielded, they can basically exchange public domain traffic unimpeded.

The original intention of WeChat design is mobile communication products, and WeChat users don't want to be disturbed by accidents. Therefore, WeChat is very strict in authority control, and only allows users to search through the bound mobile phone number, QQ number or WeChat ID. If privacy settings are turned on, it is almost impossible for the other party to initiate communication directly.

QQ is an environment where acquaintances, semi-strangers and strangers combine, which is more conducive to social interaction. It is easy for people to release the social pressure of adults here and get a break overnight.

The help of some strangers' environment to social products has been verified. QQ early chat rooms encouraged users to go out of their homes and communicate directly. At the beginning of WeChat's business, the relationship chain density was not enough, and strangers' social ways such as "shake" were also used to help product expansion.

Early mobile QQ message page

Privacy and publicity

In the spectrum of social software, if one side of QQ is WeChat, the other side is social software of strangers such as Momo.

When Tang Yan founded Momo on 20 1 1, his initial intention was to "restore the best part of QQ's early social network". At that time, QQ was the default social software, and mobile products based on location discovery were new entrepreneurial opportunities.

Pan Luan believes that Momo did better than QQ in his early years. When he was a teenager, the typical scene of using QQ for the first time was to search for friends, choose gender, city, age and whether he had a camera, and then chatted for a long time before asking if he could see his photos or videos. Most of the time, one side will die. Momo initially revealed all the above information, based on the random matching of geographical location, "to avoid unnecessary temptation."

Tang Yan's initial intention reminds Yao Shuo of the drifting bottle in QQ space, which is the most open community in his mind. The drift bottle is somewhat similar to the current Netease cloud music, which writes down the worries of primary school students who have nowhere to express. "It's all a bunch of particularly childish words." Those words were brought to strangers along the drift bottle, and there was no danger of leakage.

Since the birth of 1999 QQ, with the passage of 20 years, people's social habits and demand for social products have changed greatly.

In the early days, the social interaction of network strangers was emotional. Many of the first online novels read by the post-1970s generation were the first intimate contact of rascal Cai, and I often saw online dating news more than ten years ago.

Later, these things were broken and became the pursuit of efficiency. From the initial choice of region, age, gender, whether there is a camera or not, chatting with QQ friends, to Momo recommending strangers based on geographical location, to exploring nearby and mutually recognized encounters, and to video socialization that emphasized real-time experience last year, "On the road of pursuing efficiency, everyone's attempts are becoming more and more specific, the social path is getting shorter and shorter, and the user's purpose is getting stronger and stronger." Pan talks nonsense.

Nowadays, strangers' social interaction has entered a direct stage, that is, the purpose of users is simpler, and they all come for dating or finding objects, omitting the "love" part. The key of social products is to stratify users and improve matching efficiency. As soon as I came up, I put photos, education and work, and then I started talking, and the focus became quick satisfaction.

Yao Shuo is a silent person on WeChat, which is his more social side. When you send a circle of friends, you must consider whether the content will cause discomfort to others. "Taking care of others, shielding one by one, is very troublesome."

Stranger social software is the other extreme. Friends in reality are isolated, and the pressure of acquaintance society disappears here, and real thoughts and emotions are directly exposed. Many people let go of themselves, and the content of sex and violence is full of them.

Between WeChat and Momo, QQ is in an ambiguous zone of privacy and openness. This attribute makes it have a larger user base and a longer product life cycle.

Crisis and experiment

However, QQ is not without crisis.

Ding Daoshi believes that QQ relies on historical accumulation, and on the surface, the number of users occupies the second place in the social track. However, the comprehensive ability is not equal to the rapidly developing AutoFast and Tik Tok.

QQ gives people a stereotype of younger age. After QQ members recharge, they will open a dialog box to chat with their friends, and first they will enter the animation of QQ cm show. "I can't type until the special effects are over, which particularly bothers me." This naive design made Yao Shuo "unbearable".

In Yao Shuo's view, many functions of QQ members are mainly to satisfy users' desire to show off and compare with others. Junior and senior high school students prefer the function of QQ membership, because people of this age are self-centered and always feel that they are awesome. "Membership is a double-edged sword. It gives many privileges and is more convenient to use, but it encourages excessive comparison and privileged consciousness that society should not have."

In the ten years since WeChat became Tencent Hua Dan, the official account and video number of WeChat, the deep consumption scene of content and entertainment, have been gradually improved, and WeChat payment has become a national function. The peak of user penetration in the history of QQ cannot be compared with today's WeChat.

The advantage of work collaboration has also been surpassed by flying books and nails in the field of specialized farming office. Li Zecheng, who started his business by QQ in his early years, has now changed his team into a flying book. Shu Fei is more concerned about the needs of the team. If the team is a group of smart, self-driven and cooperative people, "then you are absolutely right to use Shu Fei."

Ding Daoshi analyzed that in the long run, the comprehensive influence of QQ will be further reduced. But it does not affect the importance of QQ to Tencent.

QQ is Tencent's experimental field. "What new features do you need to try? First go online on QQ to see the user's reaction, and then decide whether to promote it. " Li Zecheng said.

For the exploration of some new functions, QQ users are more likely to accept it, while WeChat users are more likely to regard it as an interruption. For example, double-clicking the "take a shot" function of WeChat avatar, "everyone hates it", Yao Shuo said.

QQ is more responsible for improving user retention and experience. Li Zecheng believes that Tencent's appointment of Yao Xiaoguang to take charge of the game business is intended to further explore entertainment and gamification. Some new experiments, including the meta-universe, are likely to start with QQ first.

Wechat represents Tencent's corporate image, and its product manager, Zhang Xiaolong, also tends to be conservative and steady in design. After reaching the top of the national social application for many years, the idol burden of WeChat is very heavy, and the introduction of new functions is too extensive and inappropriate.

QQ has never released the design concept of talks, rarely made too high-profile moves, and has not assumed too much social responsibility. "It's a big deal to make a feature unpopular and then quit. Anyway, it is already Mrs. Niu. It doesn't matter if you put on a little makeup or go out of line. " Li Zecheng believes.

QQ has a window for cutting short videos and a live broadcast function, so users can complete content consumption in QQ without worrying about being discovered by acquaintances. "It's just not done yet, and the quality of consumption cannot be guaranteed."

As a product that many users will open when they unlock their mobile phones every day, traffic pool is the greatest value of QQ. There is only one product, QQ, and the imagination of profit is relatively limited. It is more linked with various independent products to explore commercialization. In addition to the product itself, a series of hatched products, such as QQ music and QQ reading, have many ways to make profits.

Li Zecheng is not optimistic about the innovation space of QQ. Internet industry has become an elite industry, and the existing QQ team is aging. "Young people who squeeze into Tencent through school recruitment every year may be more standardized and elite, but their sense of innovation should be questioned."

But the product itself is a dead thing, and how to use it depends on the person who designs it and the person who uses it. When innovation is weak, as long as large products do not hinder users, violate laws and regulations, and do not destroy product ecology, there is still a chance to make local innovations.

The market in China is large enough, the population of the country is large enough, the culture is tolerant enough, and the stratification is diverse enough. There are always some scenes that big products can't cover. As long as a social software can provide a suitable small environment for local users in a vast market, it can continue to seek living space.