Editing Introduction: Unlike the often criticized Facebook, Instagram is almost a zero-negative app. Its founder hopes to make it a utopia on the Internet, and from the perspective of product retention rates, this wish is being realized step by step. From a product design perspective, Instagram is shifting towards the direction of chat tools. The author of this article will analyze this, hoping it will be helpful to you.
According to data from App Annie, Instagram has unknowingly owned more than 1 billion MAUs around the world, which means that more than 1/7 people around the world will open Instagram every month, which is close to 1/2 of its parent company Facebook.
is different from Facebook that is often criticized for privacy, recommendation algorithms, etc., that Instagram is almost a zero-negative app. In his book "No Filter", which tells the story of Instagram from its start-up to being acquired by Facebook to defeating Snapchat, Instagram founder Kevin Systrom's vision for Instagram is to create a utopia on the Internet.
Compared with Facebook's growth-driven product concept, Instagram attaches more importance to user experience and community atmosphere. For example, in Instagram, there is no retweet function similar to Twitter, because Systrom believes that Instagram is used to record highlights in users' lives and does not want users' profiles to be flooded with a large number of retweets.
has another interesting number. Instagram retention is very excellent in many countries around the world, far higher than Facebook and TikTok (this is also the reason why Zuckerberg confidently stated that his product retention is much higher than his opponent when asked about the threat of TikTok). The reason behind the super high user retention of
is that in addition to excellent product design and UGC content, it is very important that Instagram is slowly changing from an image publishing tool to a chat tool.
WeChat was just a pure chat tool at the beginning, and it was only added to the circle of friends of graphic and text social networking in the later version. Instagram has taken the opposite path, starting with a picture publishing platform, and now it is constantly strengthening its chat function, and the two are slowly moving towards a convergence.
1. INS chat module explores
1. Entry and traffic allocation
To determine the status of a function in the entire product, you only need to look at its entry and traffic allocation. On Instagram, chats are placed in the upper right corner of a very clean homepage (feed page).
Feed is definitely the page with the highest PV on Ins, and this page is very clean. There are no interferences except for the feed and Story, which allows the chat button to fully gain user attention. Not only that, the chat page can also be swiped directly to the home page to enter, greatly shortening the path.
Of course, things are not that simple yet. In order to further increase the usage rate of chat, ins combines Story's comments with chat. Users comment under the Story of friends. The content of the comment will directly enter the conversation as chat content, which will guide Story users into the chat well, and greatly promote the interaction between friends.
In the chat page, online users will have highlighted avatar frame, online green dots and online text prompts. This highlighted avatar frame is similar to the highlighting effect on Story, and has a strong behavioral summoning. The purpose of so many prompts is quite obvious, I hope you can socialize and talk more.
2. Compared with the chat module
and the WeChat chat interface, the most obvious difference is that there is less interference in the interface.
, on the one hand, Ins only displays the other person's avatar, not his own avatar. This is actually more in line with the conversation scene in reality. We are talking at the other person's face, and there is no mirror that allows us to see ourselves at the same time.
On the other hand, the timeline information is also hidden to the left swipe to be displayed. Only chats with a longer span will display time, reducing information interference and social anxiety. On WeChat, if the other party responds quickly and the reply is slow, and the time is displayed after the reply is displayed, I always feel anxious. Ins' design can actually weaken the social pressure caused by the reply speed.
3. Chat background
has a surprising feature that is the setting of chat background. Chat bubbles and background styles can be adjusted. Not only that, my friends and I were surprised to find that this setting is actually synchronized! In other words, if I change the bubble to yellow, the bubble seen by the other party will also turn yellow simultaneously. What a romantic feature this is.
Voice chat also has many outstanding designs in voice chat. For example, when you press the voice button for a long time, a lock button will appear above. After dragging the hand to the lock button, you can release your hand to make voice sounds without pressing the voice button all the time. It is very suitable for long voice use.
4. Clean withdrawal
Unlike WeChat withdrawal, it will leave traces of "xxx withdrew a message". Ins withdrawal is completely traceless, which can indirectly reflect the importance of the "pressure-free" concept in ins chat, and the authenticity of historical records also needs to give way to it.
5.
Instagram not only borrows Snapchat's Story, but also absorbs it into chat.
swipes upward in the chat box and will go into the after-view mode. In this mode, all conversation content will disappear after leaving the conversation. The pictures and videos taken during the chat can only be viewed once, and cannot be opened again after browsing. During the chat, any screenshot operation will be explicitly displayed in the conversation record. See the picture below:
burned after reading mainly to reduce social pressure and allow users to share and communicate more boldly. It also conforms to the mapping of real-life scenarios. In real-life chat, no information will be retained.
In normal mode (non-reading mode), the sharing of pictures and videos can also be selected in three modes: "View only once", "Allow back viewing" (disappear after viewing twice), and "Remain in conversation".
2. The future of stress-free socialization
"No Filter" tells an interesting detail. Even at the time, Kevin Systrom himself refused to include the Story function in Instagram, even under the call of many people in the product team.
In Systrom's eyes, Instagram is about the wonderful moments of life, not some messy and meaningless videos or pictures that are outdated after 24 hours. It wasn't until one time when Systrom was attending a party with many celebrities, and witnessing celebrities relaxingly record the entire party with Snapchat, uploading unedited videos directly, that they realized the necessity of the Story feature.
In China, neither WeChat’s video dynamics nor Weibo ’s Weibo story seem to have caused too much splash. Is this because Chinese users don’t have a strong demand for stress-free social interaction? Or is it caused by inadequate inclination of the inlet and flow?
Zhang Xiaolong said in a WeChat public class in 2020 that the usage rate of video dynamics did not meet expectations, but did not mention that the hidden discovery page of video dynamics slides down the entrance, and the very inconspicuous bubble reminders lead to difficulty in interaction. I'm afraid no one can expect a social function to achieve good data performance under such harsh conditions.
Another number mentioned in the WeChat public class is that 200 million people set their Moments to be visible in 3 days. These users are using the "3-day visible" function as a castrated version of the post-view burn. But this has caused another contradiction. As a single carrier, the circle of friends is bearing the responsibilities of "user self-display" and "pressure-free sharing", but this is something that the current circle of friends cannot do. If the user sets the Moments to be visible for 3 days, he gives up the function of using Moments as an external exhibition hall for highlights in his life (Post of Instagram); if the user opens the Moments time, posting updates will become tiptoe, or he needs to clean up and maintain his Moments regularly.If users have strong demands for both "self-presentation of highlight moments" and "pressure-free sharing" and the Moments cannot be met at the same time, they will choose to implement Moments as one of them, and the other needs are realized through other platforms.
video dynamics have not been completed. WeChat hopes for the new "status" function on 8.0, but the "status" is in its limited form (limited state, does not support text video release), weak interaction (only likes), and deep entry, which makes people see too much hope to solve stress-free social problems.
So, it’s 2021, is there still a chance for the Chinese version of Snapchat?
Author: Aboriginal people, WeChat public account: Aboriginal people's self-study room
This article was originally published by @Aboriginal people. Everyone is a product manager. Reproduction of
without permission is prohibited. The title picture is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol
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