"Breaking the 5000-Person Limit? Let's Talk About WeChat 8.0"

This article is Lu Canwei's 32nd original piece.

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I believe many people have updated to WeChat 8.0 in the past few days, where the saying goes, "the less you describe, the bigger the matter."

Brief Overview of the 8.0 Update

After this WeChat update, you can now set your own status. Many people feel it resembles QQ's status more and more, but setting a status allows not only text but also the insertion of images, videos, and locations, as well as the ability to set the visibility range. By pulling down on the homepage, you can see unread articles, videos, and live broadcasts. The original mini-programs have been minimized, and the dynamic effects of emojis now have a full-screen floating window moved to the left. QQ Music can be shared to Moments, allowing you to see how many people are listening together. You can create music videos to send to video accounts, live broadcasts, and nearby users, which are now divided into local videos and live broadcasts, with categories for friends watching live and other different types of videos. The video account recommendation page can be turned into full-screen, and video details and comments have been merged. New friends now need to set permissions, and the red envelope page has been adjusted, with the "lucky draw" and "ordinary red envelope" options moved to the upper left corner. Live broadcasts can set a whitelist, and the video account live broadcast page has been updated, allowing status settings and viewing more live broadcasts. The original sound of video accounts can check usage frequency.

Over 5,000 People Can View Moments

This update also includes a very significant piece of news: over 5,000 people can now view Moments. Currently, there are various rumors, most saying that up to 10,000 people can view Moments, while some say the restrictions are completely lifted, allowing over 11,000 people to see them, and others say it's 6,000.

Interestingly, just days before the release of WeChat 8.0, there were widespread malfunctions in both WeChat and WeChat Work.

From a technical perspective, I believe WeChat Moments underwent a major version upgrade to support viewing by over 5,000 people, but the exact number that can be opened is still being tested internally, which is why various versions of the statement have emerged.

Why did WeChat decide to open up Moments at this time? It’s not hard to understand from the perspective of promoting video accounts through public classes. This revision has optimized many aspects for video accounts, especially allowing direct playback of video accounts from Moments. Although video accounts have a separate entry, they are still relatively minor compared to the traffic from Moments.

For most people, much of the information from video accounts comes from friends sharing it in Moments. If one needs to actively enter the video account homepage to see good recommendations, then click, and then reach friends, the entire cycle is too long. Therefore, directly clicking from Moments to see something interesting, liking, commenting, and sharing can amplify the traffic for video accounts.

So who are the current content producers for video accounts? They are precisely those who operate private traffic. Currently, much of the content on video accounts is produced by marketing accounts, lacking quality original content, which is not what WeChat hopes to see and is not conducive to the development of video accounts, as video accounts are a platform where everyone can create content.

Thus, I predict that WeChat will begin to strengthen regulation on the content within video accounts, support quality content producers, and encourage them to share in their own Moments with thousands of friends.

Here are two tips for adding friends:

Currently, WeChat only allows adding 20-30 people per day, depending on the account situation. So you can go to 【My】 - 【Settings】 - 【Privacy】 and turn off 【Require verification when adding me as a friend】, then let others add you, and you can slowly add them back as friends. After you finish adding people, you can turn it back off. Since last night, my groups have exploded, and over 200 people have added me directly. Most people come from groups, so you can go to 【Contacts】 - 【Tags】 - find your tag - 【Add Members】 - choose to import from the group, so people in the group will be tagged in bulk.

Floating Window Redesign

To be honest, I don't like this floating window redesign. Although the previous version was like a stubborn sticker, I could see it everywhere. The current floating window feels more like I’m throwing information into favorites; I might not remember that I have some articles left unread for years.

However, the benefit of this redesign is that it provides WeChat with a new entry point. Once a habit of operation is cultivated, will this page be able to hold more things in the future?

For example, could it serve as a channel for new features? This page currently holds infinite possibilities.

Pull-Down Interface Redesign

This redesign has directly cast my mini-programs into the cold palace; overnight, adding my mini-programs has become quite useless. Everyone will try various ways to make you use them, hoping to see them in the mini-programs you’ve used. Unread articles essentially represent an increase in completion rates, benefiting authors who like to write long articles, as they will no longer suffer from fragmented time issues or floating window problems that lead to poor completion rates; they can check articles during other fragmented times.

The emergence of this feature also means that future articles will no longer need to occupy the floating window, so what will the floating window interface look like in the future? It feels like WeChat is making a significant move.

Full-Screen Dynamic Effects for Emojis

I wonder if everyone remembers the full-screen Easter egg that appeared while playing Call of Duty recently. This feature was actually tested in a small range last time.

I believe everyone remembers the various new gameplay with brand red envelope covers recently. I wonder if there will be brand emojis next year, such as emojis featuring a brand's logo, which, when sent, could trigger a full-screen Easter egg (advertisement), completely opening up new advertising gameplay. Tencent's stock is likely to soar again.

Personal Status

This actually replaces the signature in Moments, allowing for background images and becoming a new advertising space in private domains.

The idea will currently appear behind the WeChat name, and its significance is still unclear. I boldly speculate that this feature may die out, similar to the Moments video; I’ll check how many people have noticed that the entry for Moments video is already gone.

Finally, my personal status advertising space is hereby available for rent at 99 yuan per day; feel free to reach out.

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