WeChat Uncovered: The Inside Story of China's Super App

Insights and Untold Stories from Its Founder on Revolutionizing Digital Life

WeChat founder Allen Zhang (Zhang Xiaolong) gave a speech at WeChat’s Open Class Pro event in 2019, he asserted that the value that mobile apps can deliver via improved services is limitless.

And, WeChat is expanding to revolve around different standalone apps, such as the mobile app for reading books WeRead, and will try different services that are independent of but related to WeChat.

If you'd like to get into the head of Allen Zhang, you can read the official translation by WeChat team of his speech below. He shared design principles and changes, WeChat history, driving forces, mini-programs, social interactions, numbers of users, and the future.

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Good evening everyone! I’m Allen Zhang.

We just looked at some complaints (on-screen). Very good, because every day I hear complaints, I’m already used to it. I feel that in China, every day there are 500 million people saying we are not doing well and 100 million people wanting to teach me how to make products. I think this is very normal. But I’m not here to teach everyone how to make products.

I feel this year was special, WeChat’s eighth year. In August, WeChat’s daily login rate surpassed one billion. This is a momentous milestone, possibly the first Chinese app to reach one billion daily active users. We never released such information before. Maybe to us it was just a matter of time, but to a mobile product developer, it is still an achievement worth celebrating.

Design Principles and Changes

My friend once told me: “In the internet industry, WeChat is a different breed.” What he meant was that WeChat is different from other products. I was shocked, and at the same time very proud.

I was proud because “a different breed” meant WeChat is one of a kind, and even outstanding. But I was shocked because WeChat is only dedicated to making a good product — and because of that we are one of a kind? It is because many products do not see themselves as “products”, and don’t see users as “users”. At WeChat, we have merely done these basic two things.

WeChat is different from many products, as exhibited in many aspects. For example, when it comes to Chinese New Year, many apps will change their logo and interface to red and yellow for the holiday, making it look like stir-fried eggs and tomatoes. However, WeChat doesn’t do that. Many people ask us why we insist on not doing it.

Currently, WeChat has reached one billion DAU (daily active users). Because of this, I’m actually more willing to spend some time talking in-depth about WeChat’s origin and core ideas to help explain our thought process behind WeChat.

Honestly, sometimes I just want to ask everyone: What kind of product is considered a good product? One with lots of users? One that is addictive? Or what?

I remember a few years back, we were playing with Apple’s iPhone and analyzing how such a good product was designed. I remember there was a German product designer, Dieter Rams, who came up with ten principles of good design; he was also highly regarded by Apple.

I will list these ten principles for everyone. Think about these in the context of WeChat, it’s very interesting:

• The first is a good product is innovative; it must have creativity.

• The second is it is useful.

• The third is it is beautiful.

• The fourth is it is easy to use.

• The fifth is it is unobtrusive, modest.

• The sixth is it is honest.

• The seventh is it is timeless; it won’t become outdated.

• The eighth is it doesn’t skip over any small details.

• The ninth is it is environmentally friendly and does not waste any resources.

• The tenth is it is not overly designed, meaning ‘less is more’.

Many would think that these principles are only suitable for Apple because they design and produce physical products, but users’ interactions with software products are much more frequent.

If you give users instruction, they will follow it. Users do what you prompt them to do. Both hardware and software products are essentially tools, so principles for tool design are applicable.

The reason why I highlighted these principles is that I believe that many products in the industry do not emphasize product design, or rather that product design is not their objective – design is just used to pad out a feature or squeeze profits from users.

WeChat never changes their logo or icon for holidays, many people will say that WeChat is practicing “self-restraint”. However, this decision doesn’t at all come from “self-restraint”, but rather it stems from our conviction towards good design principles. We will not make any changes that will damage the aesthetics of our product.

I noticed that in various industries when a product manager graduates and starts working, the company will misguide them. Because the company’s objective is to increase traffic and make money, hence everyone’s KPI is also to increase traffic and make money. This means the product manager’s work objective is not to create the best product, but to use whatever means necessary to obtain traffic.

We don’t support this way. What we advocate more is to use WeChat to create good products for our users.

I’m grateful for my past experience – from the PC era creating Foxmail, and later QQMail, to the smartphone era creating WeChat – because I’ve experienced many, many products. It’s to the point that my gut can tell what is a good product and what isn’t, which helps guide me in creating products.

Once I asked my colleagues a question: “In the PC era, what page has the most views?” The answer is Internet Explorer’s 404 error page. Then I asked, “Why didn’t Microsoft put an ad on the page?” My colleagues couldn’t answer. This question is very meaningful, right? Why didn’t Microsoft place an ad on a page with such high traffic? Why doesn’t WeChat place an ad on its startup page? Everyone can think about this.

WeChat is eight years old. Think for a second, how much time do you spend on WeChat every day? Do you spend more time with your closest family and friends, or with WeChat? If WeChat was a person, certainly it would be your best friend, that’s why you’re willing to spend so much time on it. Then, how could I stick an ad on your best friend’s face? Every time you saw him, you would have to watch an ad before you could talk to him.

Interestingly, because we stick to our principles, we must change many things… The important thing is that we make sure our products adapt to the era we are in, rather than failing to adapt it out of fear that users will complain.

Interestingly, because we stick to our principles, we must change many things.

This reminds me of the major change we made in WeChat version 7.0’s user interface. Many users complained, saying that they weren’t used to it.

Actually, any major updates will always cause user dissatisfaction because people are used to whatever they are familiar with, and whatever they are familiar with is the best. We can’t poll one billion users to decide what is good. So, how do we improve our design through such changes, making sure that the change is for the better? These decisions must follow good principles.

Just like WeChat version 7.0, we spent a very long time on it; I kept switching my own WeChat back and forth between the old and new versions. After a while, I wasn’t willing to switch back to the old version.

Maybe users can’t accept the new version right away, but I believe that after they become familiar with it, they will accept it. The important thing is that we make sure our products adapt to the era we are in, rather than failing to adapt it out of fear that users will complain.

Especially regarding UI, we can never please everyone. But we can make the product more beautiful, adapting it to or even shaping our users’ aesthetic preferences, instead of lagging behind.

WeChat’s History

Many people have probably heard this story before, but back then, I wrote an email to Pony [Ma Huateng] about creating WeChat. This is a true story, though there are also some made-up stories out there, like that we went to some temple…

Anyway, thinking back to that email, from time to time I experienced a kind of post-event fear – if I didn’t send that email that night, and I went to shoot some pool instead, then there probably would be no WeChat or another team in the company might have made a different WeChat.

I find that many ideas come suddenly as if God has programmed code and puts it in your mind at the right time.

But that doesn’t mean traces of the idea for WeChat can’t be found before that moment. A year before WeChat was released, we had made QQMail into China’s most popular email provider. We tried many new things with it, such as Message in a Bottle, and I also spent a year designing Reading Corner in the email inbox.

Subsequently, a lot of our later WeChat products have borne some traces of QQMail, such as Subscription Accounts and Moments. We experimented with different methods of social interaction in QQMail’s Reading Corner; based on a social form of reading, friends could share and discuss articles with friends.

But Reading Corner was only a small part of the email inbox, so not many people used it. It got to the point where we felt we had reached the limits of the product and that it was time to change direction.

When Kik came out, I realized there was an opportunity – this opportunity did not necessarily just stem from Kik as a product, but it came from me starting to use a smartphone, and from the lack of good communication tools in many PC products and messaging software.

My thought was very simple at that time – I wanted to make a communication tool for myself and others to use. Coincidentally we had a team developing a mobile version of QQMail, so we assembled a team of ten to start work on WeChat. Including back-end developers, three mobile front-end developers, UI, myself, and a recent graduate on my team, ten people in total. In two months, we had created the first version.

This is how WeChat got started, and this past year has been WeChat’s eighth year, a meaningful milestone. It marks the maturation of our product since its birth.

At that time, we had one principle: if a new product can’t grow naturally, we shouldn’t market it. So in the first five months, we didn’t promote it ourselves; we were waiting to see if users would be attracted to WeChat, if they would promote it themselves. If users weren’t willing to do this, whatever marketing we did would be meaningless.

I remember when WeChat version 2.0 was introduced, we saw user growth, not very rapid growth, but it was increasing naturally. At that moment, we knew we could start marketing it. We were grateful we had made a couple of good decisions.

First, we didn’t import users and automatically add them as friends within WeChat, instead of letting users choose who to invite or send a friend request to one-by-one. Second, when the product wasn’t yet widely recognized, we let it grow naturally rather than market it. These two things were the right way to do it. Although it took more time, it meant that the product was healthy when it really started to grow.

I’d like to mention a statistic: in August this year, WeChat daily active users surpassed one billion.

This is probably the first product in China to exceed one billion DAU.

When it exceeded one billion DAU, our team didn’t celebrate. Everyone felt reaching one billion was just a matter of time. But when I saw the data, I was touched.

I’m very happy that I can accompany a product for eight years. Moreover, I’ve always seen myself as a product manager, not a business manager. I believe this is necessary, because a good product requires a certain degree of ‘dictatorship’, otherwise it will embody all sorts of different, conflicting opinions and its personality will become fragmented.

Hence this year’s Open Class is different from that of previous years. I’m more willing to explain our thinking behind different aspects of WeChat.

I believe it’ll be useful for everyone to understand WeChat.

Driving Forces