In creating a shovel for video accounts, is WeChat aiming at "Jianying" or "Miaoya"?

With the development of short videos, WeChat has also recently upgraded its combat power and introduced another helper, the "Miaojian Camera" App, trying to intervene in the production of short video content from the shooting stage. In the AIGC era, how is the "Miaojian Camera" helper? Can it help the video account go further?

“Editing tools will become our daily necessity, just like cameras,” said Kiki, the person in charge, while standing on the podium at the first Creative Conference of Jianying.

As the saying goes, in 2020, many Internet giants including Bilibili, Zhihu, Baidu, and Tencent have successively launched editing tools adapted to their own platforms through mergers and acquisitions, independent development, etc. The race for short video production tools is even seen as a second battlefield for big companies to seize the short video market.

However, although there have been many contestants over the years, no one has been able to shake the TikTok-owned Jianying in the slightest.

Perhaps seeing that it has not made any progress in the short video productivity battlefield, WeChat has recently upgraded its combat power again. When the previously launched editing tool "Miaojian" was not very popular, it introduced another helper "Miaojian Camera" App, trying to intervene in the production of short video content from the shooting stage.

From the perspective of productivity, the newly launched "Miaojian Camera" can cooperate with WeChat's "Miaojian" App and "Video Account" platform to complete the full process of "shooting-editing-distribution" of short video content, and use the synergy effect of the whole family of WeChat products to form a defense chain for the upstream and downstream of the short video ecosystem for "Tik Tok + Jianying".

However, defense is often a static result. In the dynamic process, how to find the right time to launch a better attack may be another reason why WeChat chose to personally test the waters for camera products.

After all, Alibaba’s MiaoYa Camera has just become a hit. As a frontier battle in the AIGC track, WeChat also needs a product to help the team “know first when the water in the river is warm in spring.”

01 Recreate a “Jianying”

Information from the official website of the "Miaojian Camera" App shows that currently this product only has an iOS version.

Information from the Apple App Store shows that this product, Tencent Video, WeChat Input Method, and Tencent Docs all belong to the same developer. From the developer information, it is not clear which business group within Tencent Miaojian Camera belongs to. However, according to a report by Beijing Business Daily, an insider said that Miaojian Camera is an independent APP developed by the WeChat team.

In addition, the fact that users of Miaojian Camera can choose to share to WeChat and Moments by clicking the share button also shows that Miaojian Camera and WeChat are closely related.

Update information from the Apple App Store also shows that the product was launched in version 1.0 on September 14, and then iterated a small version every week, and is currently updated to version 1.0.2. The high-frequency iteration is mainly to adapt to the iPhone 15 series models that Apple has just launched recently.

Therefore, regarding the launch of camera products at this time, some netizens commented that WeChat itself might have become fed up with the boring built-in camera and wanted to make up for its own weaknesses through a full range of products.

There have been many complaints about the limited function of WeChat Camera. In 2018, the well-known technology self-media iFanr even pushed an article introducing how to quickly enable Apple's native camera in WeChat, making it easier to share photos in social scenarios.

Perhaps it is really to make up for the shortcomings of WeChat's built-in camera function. In the product introduction of Apple App Store, "Miaojian Camera" focuses on the characteristic positioning of "Say goodbye to repeated photo editing, and get satisfactory images with just a press of the shutter", and adds filters and other image beautification functions to the camera.

In terms of other product functions, Miaojian Camera provides focus presets, composition tools, high-definition photography, super anti-shake and other functions, which can ensure the high quality of the shooting materials from the source; it also supports one-click puzzles and provides a variety of puzzle layouts to adapt to various multi-picture sharing scenarios.

Some content creators believe that compared with the rich built-in camera functions of short video platforms such as Kuaishou and Douyin, the launch of Miaojian Camera can help short video content producers with richer camera functions and lower the threshold for creation. At the same time, it can also complement the previous editing tools and build a content production tool process centered on the video account.

The characteristics of the tool itself can help the platform build content barriers. Generally speaking, if a content platform wants to promote the creation of a theme, it often needs to support user creation from the source of content production.

Taking the May Day holiday this year as an example, Douyin and Jianying worked together to seize the "May Day holiday" and "520" and other nodes, and successively released video creation and imitation activities such as "Save the May Day Waste Film Plan" and "How to Get the Correct Way to Show Affection", and at the same time launched the "AI Instant Universe" limited-time free special effects gameplay.

With the help of productivity tools and the imitation and following effect of user creations, the video playback volume under the Douyin related topic #Unlock the entire universe in one second# exceeded 2.7 billion times, which not only quickly formed the platform's unique content style during the event, but also further increased the download volume of creation tools.

The editing tools within its own ecosystem can also promote the commercialization of the platform. For example, in April 2023, McAfee launched a short video creation competition on Douyin in the form of a video editing task challenge around brand-related topics, and ultimately gained brand exposure with a total of over 160 million views.

As a productivity tool, Jianying has been included in the Douyin Merchant Operation Manual produced by ByteDance many times, as it effectively empowers merchants. For WeChat Video Account, whether it is creating differentiated content or promoting the commercialization of the platform, it obviously needs a more suitable "golden shovel" in the upstream of the short video production line.

02 An AIGC laboratory?

Zhang Xiaolong once joked on Fanfou: "How many functions does a product have to add before it becomes a junk product?" However, with the growing size of national social apps, he had to change his words at the WeChat 10th anniversary open class: "How many functions does a product have to add before it doesn't become a junk product?"

Therefore, product practitioner Zhang Heng believes that: "WeChat launched the photography and video recording tools in preparation for more innovations." In his opinion, in order to solve the problem of what functions to add, WeChat has adopted a new strategy of conducting functional innovation within its independent apps in the past, and then delegating some functions to WeChat's product functions based on maturity and user demand evaluation.

Take WeChat official accounts as an example. In the past six months, WeChat has launched the underline sharing function and the article listening function. The former is similar to the underline function in WeChat Reading and can be seen as the result of the optimization and adaptation of the relevant functions in WeChat Reading. The latter, to a certain extent, draws on the functions and user needs of WeChat Audiobook.

A similar approach is also a common practice of smartphone manufacturers - innovating on more flexible independent products, and then transferring good functions to the entire product line. For WeChat, independent apps with higher degrees of freedom actually play the role of "innovation laboratories."

In the past, WeChat’s functional innovations were mainly focused on text and image content. Now that we have come to a content ecosystem centered around video accounts, we naturally need more camera products to explore more innovative shooting functions.

Not only that, from the perspective of future product evolution, WeChat currently also needs a product that can carry out the AIGC outpost battle, and camera products are undoubtedly the best choice.

For example, Alibaba's MiaoYa Camera was born from the interest group of the "AIGC Breaking Wall Action Group" formed among employees. After three months of polishing, it was finally launched in mid-July and became a hit among AIGC applications.

ByteDance has also made early plans for AIGC. First, Jianying, a product within the Douyin ecosystem, appeared in the filing list of deep synthesis service algorithms released by the Cyberspace Administration of China on June 20, providing AIGC production capabilities to many of its apps.

At the same time, according to public information reports, Jianying is also testing the digital human function on mobile phones and computers. Through digital human templates, it covers middle-aged and young men and women, covering a variety of styles such as Chinese style, elegance, leisure, youth, etc., and matches each digital human with a voice that matches their gender, age and style.

This function can further lower the threshold for creation. Users can insert a digital human image into the video, input the text, and the digital human will automatically read it. It is reported that this function is expected to be officially launched at the end of September.

Interestingly, perhaps due to the leading effect of Jianying in productivity tools, when it was mentioned in an internal sharing session of Shixiang Technology, it was listed together with Midjourney as one of the most concerned AIGC products within the company.

Under the general trend, even though Ma Huateng emphasized that there is no rush for large models, he still released the self-developed Hunyuan large model not long ago. In terms of C-end products, it is obvious that some products are also needed for exploration.

At the WeChat Night, Zhang Xiaolong said that the goal of WeChat input method is not to gain a large number of users in the short term, but because input method is the entrance to text expression, and input method will inevitably become more and more intelligent, and new input forms may emerge, so it is still worth investing in it. From this perspective, Miaojian Camera is more like targeting Ali Miaoya Camera.

Regardless of the end point, from the starting point, the newly launched Miaoya Camera still maintains the distinctive WeChat characteristics. Like the WeChat input method, this product also emphasizes privacy. Users can use it without registration and login, and all image data is only saved in the user's mobile phone album and will not be uploaded to the cloud.

At the WeChat Open Class in 2021, Zhang Xiaolong mentioned the original intention of WeChat to develop an input method: user privacy is part of the user experience, and WeChat has developed its own input method, "at least in terms of security, we can do well enough." In his opinion, WeChat may be the product that pays the most attention to privacy protection on the Chinese Internet, and will not retain chat content.

In the AIGC era, exploring user privacy protection may be another advantageous path chosen by WeChat.

Author: Gu Er, Editor: Yi Ye

Source public account: Xinentropy (ID: baoliaohui), insight into business variables and exploration of the essence of business.