微信需要面对的大烦恼

China’s most popular chat app has seen off rivals in China such as Alibaba’s Laiwang, Korean-Japanese Line and Facebook’s WhatsApp. But now some users of WeChat — and even its creator — say it is threatened by a greater homegrown challenge: clutter.

中国最受欢迎的聊天应用“微信”(WeChat)在国内将竞争对手远远甩在了身后，如阿里巴巴(Alibaba)的来往(Laiwang)、拥有日韩背景的Line以及Facebook旗下的WhatsApp。但眼下却有一些用户表示，微信正面临一个更大的而且源于自身的挑战：信息庞杂。而微信的创造者也看到了这个问题。

Since its launch in 2011, WeChat, or Weixin as it is more commonly known in China, has become synonymous with the mobile internet for China’s 525m smartphone users, an addictive way to chat online that has won international praise for its minimalist design.

自2011年推出以来，对中国5.25亿的智能手机用户而言，微信已成为“移动互联网”的代名词。这种让人沉迷的在线聊天方式还因其极简的设计赢得了国际赞誉。

It is hard to overstate the pervasiveness of WeChat in Chinese life — the app is a phone, messenger, video conference, ecommerce platform and gaming console, not to mention noodle delivery service, for a nation of people in love with their smartphones. Many a new relationship is sealed with the ritual smartphone “scan” of one anothers’ WeChat QR code. 

可以毫不夸张地说，微信已融入了中国人生活的方方面面——对酷爱智能手机的中国人来说，这款应用既可以通电话、发讯息、进行视频会议，也是电子商务及游戏平台，更别提还有送餐上门服务。人们只需用智能手机相互“扫描”对方的微信二维码，新的朋友关系便可以马上建立。

But popularity has come at a price: users say they are being overloaded with everything from messages to cartoon gifs to ads.

但微信的普及也是有代价的：有用户表示，微信上大量的信息——从文字信息到卡通动态图到广告——已让他们不堪其扰。

Xie Huang Huang, writing on his microblog, says he hesitates to open up his WeChat because he will be flooded with messages. “I was attracted to WeChat because I thought it was virgin land in an age of information explosion. But now it is fragmented, overwhelming and useless.” 

谢黄黄（音）在自己的微博上写道，他现在都不太愿意打开微信了，因为一打开就会被大量信息淹没。他说，以前被微信吸引，是因为觉得它是信息爆炸时代的一块处女地，但现在微信上的信息变得碎片化、令人应接不暇，也没什么用。

In January, China’s official news agency Xinhua devoted an editorial to “WeChat fatigue”, saying an estimated 25 per cent of users check it more than 30 times per day. “We have been abducted by an explosion of rubbish” on WeChat, it said.

今年1月，中国官方通讯社新华社(Xinhua)发表了一篇有关“微信疲劳”的评论，称约有25%的用户每天查看微信超过30次。文章称，微信上的“信息垃圾”俘虏了我们。 

“Everyday we find ourselves surrounded by noisy WeChat groups, the endless memories posts of friends and family, they have become our daily essentials. No one likes being kidnapped by WeChat, but each of us have our own reasons for not being able to give up WeChat.” 

“很多人起床第一件事和睡前最后一件事，都是查看微信；各种吵吵闹闹的微信群、亲朋好友的朋友圈，已成为我们每天的必修课……没有谁喜欢被微信绑架，但每个人都有太多理由放不下微信。” 

The app is central to the future of Tencent, China’s most valuable internet company with a market capitalisation of $185bn, which has staked its business model on the success of its star platform.

腾讯(Tencent)是中国最具价值的互联网公司，市值1850亿美元，而微信在腾讯的未来发展中处于核心地位——腾讯已将其商业模式押注在这款明星平台的成功上。

Tencent makes most of its money from gaming but also boasts interests in everything from online video through car hailing to food delivery. It wants to use WeChat as the gateway platform for users to access these services — all now embedded in WeChat, much like apps within an app. Tencent hopes this will one day make it unnecessary to use rival apps. 

腾讯大多数利润来自游戏，但对其他许多领域——从在线视频、叫车服务到美食外卖——也都表现出强烈的兴趣。腾讯想利用微信作为用户获得这些服务的入口平台——所有这些服务如今都被嵌入了微信，就像在一款应用中嵌入许多其他应用。腾讯希望，将来有一天，它可以无需再使用竞争对手的应用。

While the service’s user base is growing — Tencent said the number of active WeChat accounts rose 39 per cent last year to 697m — there are some worrying precedents for WeChat’s clutter problem.

虽然微信的用户基础在不断扩大——腾讯表示，微信活跃账号的数量去年增加了39%，至6.97亿——但关于微信“信息太杂”的问题，存在一些令人担忧的前车之鉴。

Sina Weibo, for example, China’s version of Twitter, was once a competitor, but lost the social media crown to WeChat after it introduced advertising on a large scale.

例如，被称为中国版Twitter的新浪微博(Sina Weibo)曾是微信的竞争对手，但在大规模引入广告之后，便向微信让出了社交媒体头把交椅的位置。

“Weibo hit its peak in 2011; it was becoming too commercialised, everyone was clamouring for attention and marketing was going too far,” says Zhang Yi, head of Guangzhou-based internet consultancy iMedia. “I think WeChat will soon face the same problem.” 

“微博在2011年达到巅峰，但后来变得过于商业化，每个人都在通过各种手段吸引注意力，营销做得太过了，”广州互联网咨询公司艾媒咨询(iiMedia)负责人张毅表示，“我认为微信很快就会面临同样的问题。”

WeChat has been careful with introducing advertising — starting in 2015 — so as not to bombard users.

微信对于引入广告（始于2015年）一直保持谨慎，以免对用户造成过大干扰。

Much of that is down to Zhang Xiaolong, WeChat’s reclusive creator, who is a cult figure among Chinese internet users. “Zhang is a mysophobic product manager who wants to keep WeChat detached from the commercial world,” according to Beijing-based tech blogger Zong Ning. 

这在很大程度上要归功于行事低调的微信创始人张小龙——受中国互联网用户顶礼膜拜的偶像。北京的科技博主宗宁表示：“张小龙是一位有不洁恐怖症的产品经理，他想要保持微信与商业世界的距离。”

While he is rarely seen in public, Mr Zhang made a surprise appearance on a podcast in January. The greatest challenge for WeChat, he told his online audience, “is not how much more we can do, but how many things we can screen and block . . . it takes a lot of work so that WeChat remains uncluttered”. 

虽然张小龙很少在公开场合露面，但今年1月，他出人意料地现身一档播客节目。他对在线观众表示，微信面临的最大挑战“不是在于我们再多做多少事情，而是我们能够挡掉多少事情……需要做很多事情才能让微信里面的内容非常干净”。

The same week his podcast appeared, WeChat began dealing with clutter, deleting or suspending blog accounts that were spamming users with messages.

上述播客发布的同一周，微信开始着手处理信息庞杂的问题，删除或暂时关闭那些向用户滥发信息的公众号。

As for ads, “good commercialisation does not harass users and only reaches its targeted users”, he said. “We don’t want users to have so many messages that they can never finish dealing with them.”

至于广告，“好的商业化应该是不骚扰用户，并且是只触达他需要触达的那一部分用户”，他说，“我们不想让用户在微信里面永远都有处理不完的事情。”

Observers said Mr Zhang appeared to be delivering a message not just to the public, but to Tencent’s management, amid pressure to “monetise” WeChat by increasing advertising and adding functions.

观察人士表示，张小龙似乎不仅是在向公众，也是在向腾讯管理层传递一种信息，因为他正面临通过增加广告、添加功能来让微信创收的压力。

“WeChat is having a hard time finding the middle path, a balance between monetisation and living up to Zhang Xiaolong’s vision,” said Mr Zong, the blogger.

宗宁表示：“微信正在艰难地寻找一条中间道路，在创收与实现张小龙的理想之间寻找平衡点。”

Sure enough, in an earnings call last month, investment bank analysts peppered Tencent executives with questions about plans for “monetising” WeChat. “They all wanted to know when they are going to milk this cow,” said Mark Natkin of Beijing-based Marbridge Consulting.

果不出所料，在上月的电话财报会议上，投资银行的分析师们纷纷向腾讯高管提出有关微信“创收”计划的问题。北京迈博瑞咨询(Marbridge Consulting)的马克•纳特金(Mark Natkins)说：“他们都想知道，腾讯打算什么时候让这头奶牛下奶。”

Martin Lau, president of Tencent, resisted pressure from analysts. “I would say [WeChat] is an ad format and ad platform that carries significant long-term opportunities. But it’s an important engagement tool for our users. So we want to do it slowly and do it right,” he said in the same earnings call. 

腾讯总裁刘炽平(Martin Lau)顶住了来自分析师们的压力，他在那次电话会议中表示：“我可以说（微信）是一种广告形式与广告平台，蕴含着巨大、长远的机遇。但它也是我们用户重要的交流工具。所以，我们想慢慢来，以正确的方式来做这件事。”

Tencent has told analysts that it puts no more than one ad into WeChat’s Facebook-like “moments” feed every 24 hours, though users say they have seen two or three a day.

腾讯对投行分析师们表示，每24小时至多向微信朋友圈投放一个广告，但有用户称曾经一天见过两三个广告。

New advertising on WeChat has not hurt its popularity — active user accounts jumped 37 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2015 compared with a year ago, despite a 118 per cent annual year-on-year rise in online advertising revenues that Tencent said was partly driven by new ads. 

朋友圈广告并未对其受欢迎程度造成影响。2015年第四季度，活跃用户账号同比激增37%，而网络广告业务收入同比增长118%——腾讯称部分是由新广告形式推动的。

But analysts say Tencent must be careful not to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Mr Zong says: “WeChat contributes about $40bn of Tencent’s valuation and it must live up to that with investors.”

但分析师们称，腾讯必须谨慎，不要杀鸡取卵。宗宁说：“微信在腾讯的估值中大约占400亿美元，它在这方面一定不能辜负投资者。”