Interacting content distribution with algorithms is a very rare operation for WeChat.
“A small individual, but also has its own brand.” This slogan has been hanging on the login interface of the WeChat public platform.
On September 20th, WeChat officially tested the “Discover Public Number” function.
The so-called discovery of the public number is a new attempt by WeChat to the content distribution logic. The internal measurement interface shows that after the “Discovery of the public number” is online, in the information flow, the user will see the avatar, profile, recent tweet link, and the number of original content and the number of friends concerned. Clicking on the public number avatar will take you to the public profile page; clicking on the recently updated article title will go directly to the article.
Interpreting content distribution with algorithms is a very rare operation for WeChat. After all, in the open class of WeChat in early 2018, Zhang Xiaolong once said, “So far, a new user in WeChat, the system will not recommend him to subscribe to a public number, and will not be in the future.”
We have always been adhering to the “respect for users”, allowing users to choose their own content on WeChat, and actually began to follow the common practice of headline products: using algorithms to let information find people.
This time node launches this feature, which is not surprising. It’s getting harder and harder to make a lot of money, and the WeChat public number is getting harder and harder. In addition, the public account opening rate has dropped, and it is no longer news. The new list shows that in the first half of 2019, 97% of the public articles read less than 10,000; and QuestMobile released the “WeChat public population insight report” said that as of April 2019, Super Seven to WeChat users The public number of attention is less than 20.
On the other hand, the Matthew effect is significant, and the threshold for small and beautiful content producers to enter the market is getting higher and higher. According to previous reports, in 2017, the public account with a price of more than 100,000 took 40% of the advertising budget. In the past year or so, the proportion has risen to 58%.
After June 20, 2018, the situation of the small and beautiful public number is even more difficult. On this day, the WeChat subscription number was revised to the “Information Flow” interface. Fang Kecheng, the founder of “News Lab”, believes that this revision hurts individual creators and weakens the relationship between authors and readers, which is not conducive to creators creating personal brands. In addition, individual creators with lower frequency of postings are less obsessive in the information flow than new media organizations.
With the rise of emerging content platforms such as Vibrato, premium content creators are moving forward