WeChat a few years ago can be said to be truly “small and beautiful”, with not many functions, but just enough.
Compared with the core chat and social functions, WeChat is not very complicated, and it belongs to the level that the elders can use.
More importantly, when major mainstream apps speed up their commercialization and fill the entire interface with advertisements, WeChat is still restrained enough.
Mainstream apps have been criticized for many years, and the open-screen advertisements have not contaminated WeChat, and Xiaolei has never seen psoriasis that affects the look and feel on WeChat.
Source: Screenshot of mobile phone
To put it bluntly, even though advertising is a large part of WeChat’s revenue stream, it is not commercialized without scruples.
The functions are simple and easy to use, and the interface is simple and ad-free. It is no wonder that WeChat was popular with users a few years ago.
But after several years of development, today’s WeChat seems to be getting further and further away from “small and beautiful”.
Let’s not talk about the deeper meaning first, just look at the size of the APK file. Previously, the UP master of station B has done a survey, and the initial version of WeChat is only 457KB.
However, in the 11-year iteration, the WeChat installation package unknowingly reached 257MB.
Source: Station B @Technology Old Boy
Good guy, our mobile phone storage has not increased, but the size of the app has taken off in Wuhu…
Source: Pea Pod
The size of the app is only one aspect, and the storage mechanism of WeChat is also a bit weird. For example, emoticons and pictures are cached by default.
Send the same video to different people, and the local storage space will copy several copies…
Over time, Xiaolei’s WeChat storage usage has reached 38G, and the power consumption is far ahead of other apps.
Source: Screenshot of mobile phone
Seeing this, Xiaolei couldn’t help thinking, is WeChat better now than it was a few years ago, or is it going backwards?
I decided to take a “sacred land tour” on the classic versions of WeChat, and by the way, I will try the “epic” functions that appeared in the iterative process.
Perhaps we can learn from it that WeChat is the product concept of a national-level app.
WeChat 1.0: Pure Chat Platform
Xiaolei pointed and counted, there should be some friends, haven’t seen what WeChat 1.0 looks like.
In fact, as long as you browse the WeChat official website more, you can find the green appearance of the WeChat 1.0 beta version.
Judging from the software introduction, the WeChat team’s positioning of the app was not that complicated at that time, and just hoped that users could contact their friends at any time through WeChat.
You can use WeChat to quickly send and receive messages, take photos and share instantly, and connect with friends around you anytime, anywhere. Support handheld terminal devices based on Android platform.
Source: WeChat official website
In terms of function, it is so simple that it makes people a little uncomfortable, and there are only two main interfaces.
One is [Friends Chatting Window] and the other is [Settings], which give people an enhanced version of the app for SMS messages from operators.
Source: WeChat official website
Also because of the streamlined functions, only the core chat function, this version of WeChat is only 457 KB.
If you don’t understand, ask, what is really small and beautiful?
WeChat 2.0: Voice Intercom is here
If 1.0 is a youthful and smart little freshness, then the combination of green, white and gray in 2.0 makes WeChat more stable.
When it’s not the point, the most important and exciting feature of 2.0 is to press and hold the [Voice Intercom] to send a sound.
In addition to the expression of words and expressions, people can finally communicate with friends by voice through the Internet.
Source: WeChat official
Whether it’s a couple’s relationship, or family greetings, the warmth brought by voice is incomparable with words.
After all, the words can’t tell the tone, and it’s easy for girlfriends to misunderstand what Xiaolei wants to express.
Oh I don’t have a girlfriend, that’s fine.
Source: Network
WeChat 3.0 – 5.0: Blockbuster features are coming
The interface of WeChat 3.0 – 5.0 has not changed much, mainly due to the introduction of several new functions, which have really changed our digital life.
For example, the emergence of “Shake It” and “Drift Bottle” has made WeChat’s unfamiliar social network more and more popular.
If you have something to shake it, you can find WeChat users from all over the world, and then add a friend, and you can chat happily in the middle of the night.
Source: Drive House
As for the drift bottle, everyone is probably more familiar with it. Xiao Lei used to throw drift bottles and pick up other people’s drift bottles there when he was bored.
The “Drift Bottle” function at the beginning was quite interesting. When I picked up other people’s happy expressions, I would also be happy for them.
When the bottle full of negative emotions was opened by Xiao Lei, I would feel inexplicably empathetic and comforted.
Source: Drive House
Both “Drift Bottle” and “Shake” once carried the emotions of many users and provided emotional value.
However, these two functions were once used by fake micro-businesses and fraudsters because the threshold for conveying news was too low.
To protect users, WeChat can only remove two controversial features.
By the way, functions such as circle of friends, video calls, official accounts and WeChat red envelopes are also launched in versions 3.0 – 5.0.
Source: WeChat official
The first two functions are more user-friendly, while the official account and WeChat red envelope are more meaningful to WeChat.
It is no exaggeration to say that these two functions really support half of WeChat.
The public account is a rare content subscription platform for users. Although there was a way to subscribe to blogs by email at that time, the convenience was completely inferior to the WeChat public account.
Source: WeChat screenshot
The success of the WeChat public account once caused other manufacturers to follow suit, such as Toutiao, Baijia, Netease and Yidian.
Now the content of the official account and WeChat search have been completely opened up. Under this ecology, we can easily find the content resources we want.
In other words, WeChat is constantly sucking traffic from search engines, and it’s winning.
As for how to quickly get started with functions such as WeChat payment and WeChat red envelopes, Xiaolei will not go into details. It is estimated that everyone has seen similar analysis.
WeChat 6.0: The pinnacle
Since version 3.0, WeChat has been iterating and launching various far-reaching functions.
But in Xiaolei’s view, most of the functions are done by WeChat to expand the corresponding fields.
For example, it launched [WeChat Payment] in the payment field, and launched [Official Account] in the content field.
To be honest, there are not many functions that are really used to improve the user experience, but it makes WeChat more and more complicated.
Source: Network
However, as an old WeChat user, Xiaolei still feels that the WeChat 6.x version is the pinnacle of a generation.
For no other reason, WeChat 6.x has done a good job of balancing functionality and fluency.
There seem to be many functions. In addition to the functions of the previous version, this version has added a circle of friends advertisements.
There is also the small program that made Cook feel frightened and said that he did not talk about martial arts.
But to be honest, with the addition of so many new features, WeChat 6.x still has a good fluency, and the memory and storage footprint are not worthy of the name of “small but beautiful”.
Source: Screenshot of mobile phone
Just talking is useless, Xiaolei will take everyone on a tour of the Holy Land and feel the charm of WeChat 6.x version.
The top of the 6.x version is still black with higher contrast.
Perhaps in order to increase the sense of immersion, WeChat has been changed to an all-white design from the 7.x version. Xiaolei believes that this wave of changes is a step backward in terms of comfort.
Source: Screenshot of mobile phone
The 6.x version also retains the “Drift Bottle” function, but because the official interface has been closed, it is now in a state of “fancy and useless”.
Source: Network
As for the subscription account function, the subscription accounts at that time were still displayed in a list, which was completely different from the current information flow logic.
But in terms of the convenience of obtaining information, I think the information flow is undoubtedly more efficient.
It’s that the algorithm is easy to get windy, and Xiaolei can always read the articles he read two days ago.
Source: Screenshot of mobile phone
The most important point is that the performance overhead of this version of WeChat is really low.
Even if there are still many child processes, they do not add up to more than 1G.
Source: Screenshot of mobile phone
There is no harm if there is no comparison. Let’s take a look at the memory usage of WeChat version 8.0.28. Every process occupies a few hundred M.
Good guy, these are only two big versions, and the memory usage of WeChat is “swollen” three times.
It can only be said that WeChat has effectively forced the improvement of mobile phone performance.
Source: Screenshot of mobile phone
WeChat 7.0: Small and Beautiful Last Dance
As mentioned above, since WeChat version 7.0, the interface has undergone bulldozing changes.
The overall interface design is flat, and white is used as the basic color everywhere. This design has been used until now, and everyone is familiar with it.
Source: Bubble Network
In fact, 7.0.3, which was the first version at that time, was still very smooth and smooth, but unfortunately, this is the last dance of WeChat as “small and beautiful”.
Because subsequent updates are more and more performance- and memory-intensive, older models are more difficult to run.
Among them, there is a “credit” of .
It is not a matter of a day or two for Tencent to develop short videos, but many products have not been able to really occupy the high ground of the short video market before.
In the end, it is still necessary to let WeChat, a national-level app, have a built-in video account, and then support it with various resources, so that the video account has its current popularity.
Source: Shuying Network
Xiaolei really doesn’t like to swipe short videos in chat apps. Two different businesses are stitched together, which is kind of weird.
WeChat 8.x: To be continued
We will not go into details about WeChat 8.x, which is the big version we are currently using.
It is difficult to describe WeChat as a “chat social app” or a “payment app”. It is more appropriate to say that it is a digital life platform.
You can eat, drink, travel, chat, search, content, and short videos. You can really do anything.
Source: WeChat official website
Maybe at the beginning of WeChat, it was not just a chat tool.
At least in the chat experience, WeChat still has a lot of room for optimization.
Think about it, the long-awaited functions such as voice progress bar, access system push, and cloud backup of chat records, has WeChat been put on the agenda?
Probably not yet, but in the video account, graphic and search, WeChat is still increasing its efforts.
The current WeChat will develop more fields under the premise of ensuring normal chat, but I still hope to pay more attention to the user experience on the way to take off.