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Ma Huateng urged the public account payment function for three years to come.

Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Hedgehog Commune ” (ID: ciweigongshe ), Author context, editor Shi Can .

“Appreciation” is more like tipping, no mandatory charge, it is solely based on the reader’s personal will; “Paying” is more like charging a tea-room fee, as long as guests sit down after watching, they will charge a fixed fee.

WeChat has been “doing things” recently.

On January 15th, WeChat officially announced that the WeChat public platform is testing the subscription number payment function in grayscale, and subscription numbers that meet the opening conditions will have the opportunity to be grayed out.

It is reported that there are three main application conditions for this feature: the public account has been registered for more than 3 months; there has been no serious violations in the past 3 months; at least 3 original articles have been published. However, the first batch of grayscale tests were mainly personal numbers.

Introduction to subscription number payment features

The public account “Three Tables Dragon Gate Array” is one of the lucky ones selected by grayscale.

Two hours after the official announcement of the “Paid Reading” function, “Three Tables Longmenzhen” released “the first WeChat public account paid reading article on the entire network”, which was priced at 1 yuan.

As of 8 am on January 16th, there were nearly 5,000 paid readers of this “first in the entire network”.

At present, the price of the article does not support the operator’s own definition for the time being. The pricing range is 35 price levels ranging from 1 to 208 yuan.

Public account unpaid interface

Combining the function introduction and the paid article interface, you can find that users can read the preface and trial reading section and view the messages for free before paying, and can only read the original text and write messages after paying. Paid graphics do not support reprinting, appreciation, or insertion of advertisements.

After the paid content is distributed in batches, the parameters such as article price, preface, and trial reading ratio and settings cannot be modified. The “Three Tables Dragon Gate Array” set the trial reading ratio to 14%, just staying in front of “public account content suitable for payment” for paid sharing. After paying for unlocking, the full text of the article cannot be copied.

WeChat has already shown signs of trying to launch a public account paid reading function.

On February 14, 2017, the circle of friends of IT commentator Hong Bo shared an article “Why am I starting to sell now and will this public account be updated?”, saying that he will open a fee column.

Hong Bo’s circle of friends, Piyuan Network

Ma Huateng commented in this circle of friends, “should wait for the WeChat public account to pay for reading”, and soon received Hong Bo’s “you guys have tested too long” question. As for the launch time, Ma Huateng continued to reply to him, “already feedback, and strive to speed up.”

At that time, users’ attitudes towards paying were almost one-sided, “may be withdrawn from the subscription” and “the title party will be even more crazy” …

Three years later, as soon as news of the paid reading function came out, netizens’ initial discussions focused on guessing what the title and trial reading section would look like when paying.

Trial conjecture of netizens

Although these “Title Party” wordings are more of a “playing stalk”, but it reflects that the problem that many netizens worry about is still-Title Party cuts leeks.

In Sina Technology ’s Weibo voting on “WeChat public account test charging function”, more than 70% of netizens directly chose “take off”, indicating that such operations could not be tolerated.

Although Weibo users cannot represent the entire WeChat user group, it is not difficult to find from the comment area of ​​related tweets that users have a strong resistance to the “Title Party”, which is also mentioned in the article A hidden danger.

Another reason why users ca n’t accept paid reading is, “How do I know if an article is worth the money?”

The original articles now are not without a paid model. Readers can praise authors through the “Like Author” feature. The appreciation amount ranges from 5 yuan to 200 yuan, and can also be customized by the admirer.

The difference between opening a single paid reading and praise function is whether you get on the bus or buy a ticket first.

“Appreciation” is more like tipping, no mandatory charge, all based on the reader’s personal will; “Paying” is more like charging a tea break, as long as guests sit down after watching, they will charge a fixed fee. Paying first and then enjoying the service is also the current mainstream consumer logic for paying for knowledge. Iqiyi, Tencent Video, Youku, Get, Zhihu and other platforms all do this.

It is reported that the WeChat paid subscription function was tested in 2017, but Zhang Xiaolong thought that “paid reading” was a niche demand, and shelved it.

Three years after Ma Huateng put forward “feedback”, Zhang Xiaolong first announced in 2020 in WeChat Open Class PRO to work on short content. One week later, the payment function based on long graphic content entered the testing phase.

Why is WeChat launching “paid reading” at this time? Is it because “paid reading” is no longer a niche?

One of the current status of the WeChat public account is that the stock is sufficient, and the increase is difficult to do.

From the industry observation and feedback from the industry, the golden period of the public account has passed, and the whole is facing the typical problems of “slow powder growth rate” and “declining opening rate”.

GQ Labs also recently tweeted “Is the WeChat public account a sunset red industry?” Although “sunset red” is a bit exaggerated, the 2019 term “I’m too south” is also applicable to the public account field.

Is the WeChat public account a sunset industry?

Are you charged again?

Compared to page views, “Paid Reading” focuses more on how to “utilize” existing users.

As mentioned earlier, paying for reading is similar to the logic of paying for current knowledge. Knowledge paid platforms attract users with free content