Can Moments be pinned? There are important changes behind this!

Recently, WeChat has launched its latest internal testing feature - WeChat Moments can be pinned. When users enter Moments, they can see your pinned content first. So why did WeChat launch this feature? And which groups of people are benefited by the pinning feature? The author of this article has given a detailed explanation. Let's read it together!

Recently, the pinning function of WeChat Moments has become the focus of discussion!

On July 24, a blogger posted that WeChat was testing a feature to pin friends to the top of their social media accounts. The topic #微信内检测朋友圈可以贴顶# quickly became the top trending search on Weibo. However, only some people can use it at the moment.

You can pin one of your Moments content to the top, so that when users visit your Moments homepage, they will see your content first.

As the most active social software in China, WeChat has also felt a crisis in recent years with the rise of the Internet and the emergence of short videos, live broadcasts and other platforms. The new version of WeChat has added many functions, from "take a look" and "search" to the jump setting of Moments, all of which reflect the transformation of WeChat.

What is WeChat’s thinking behind this internal test?

Why is WeChat currently testing the function of pinning Moments?

Who can better utilize the pinning function to maximize their benefits?

Today we will focus on these topics and try to explore WeChat’s thinking and possible opportunities behind this feature!

1. What is the pinning function of WeChat Moments?

It is actually very easy to understand when you look at it in detail. Users can display a certain content from the Moments at the top of their personal page for a long time, and it is not restricted by the visible period. It also seems to support pinning multiple Moments.

This feature is very suitable for users who have posted important updates and hope that these updates will not be covered by other actions in the circle of friends.

It is also very convenient to operate. Just select a circle of friends that you want to pin to the top in your circle of friends, and then click the three dots in the upper right corner. At this time, the "Pin" option will appear above "Modify visible range".

However, you can only pin one Moments post at a time. If there is already a pinned post, you need to unpin it before you can pin other posts. To do this, just follow the steps to set up a pinned post and change the "Pin" option to "Unpin".

2. Why is WeChat currently testing the function of pinning Moments to the top?

In fact, this is not the first time WeChat has tried the function of pinning Moments!

As early as 2020, in order to promote the WeChat video account, Tencent launched a new feature, that is, video account creators can share live broadcasts to Moments during live broadcasts. As soon as friends open Moments, they can see the live broadcast appear at the top position, and it cannot be deleted until the live broadcast ends.

At that time, the pinning function was more for attracting traffic to the video account, and the target group was only the creators of the video account, and only they could "actively pin it to the top."

At this time, the pinning function is finally open to non-video account creators. However, as early as April this year, some netizens broke the news that the internal test was launched.

It has been revealed again this time, maybe it is not far from being pinned to the top.

If Moments is so important to WeChat, why has the pinning function been so late in arriving?

Let’s first take a look at which social apps similar to WeChat Moments on the market have the pinning function.

First, another instant information sharing software - Weibo.

Weibo launched the pinning feature for personal microblogs as early as July 2012, more than 10 years earlier than WeChat. Six months before the launch of the pinning feature, Weibo had 300 million registered users (December 2011), and in December 2012, the number reached 503 million, a full-year growth rate of 73%, halving the time it took to grow the number of users by 200 million. The number of active users increased by 82% year-on-year, also nearly doubling.

Although this achievement cannot be entirely attributed to the launch of the pinning function, it is undeniable that the launch of the pinning function must have made an indelible contribution.

According to the 2022 financial report released by Tencent, there is a sentence worth noting: "In non-chat scenarios, the usage time of Moments this quarter was roughly stable year-on-year."

This sentence reveals a message - the usage rate of Moments is not as good as the same period last year, or even worse . This may be one of the reasons why Tencent did not disclose the data. According to surveys, the usage rate of WeChat Moments has dropped from 85% in June 2020 to 71.4% in 2022. The status of Moments is precarious, and it is time to make changes!

Therefore, WeChat made minor adjustments to Moments at this point in time, hoping that Moments could experience a second burst of vitality like Weibo.

Secondly, the more popular social apps nowadays all have their own pinning function.

For example, Xiaohongshu, a life service guide platform, Zhihu, a high-quality original content and Q&A platform, Douyin, a life-recording service platform, etc., that is to say, WeChat's competitors are all "pinned"! From the perspective of function, there are many, such as a symbol of personal identity, increasing traffic and attention, recording life moments, event reminders, personalized differentiation, etc.

Just like Weibo CEO Cao Guowei once lamented that "the emergence of WeChat has indeed taken away users' time", this sentence can also be applied now - the pinning function of competitors has also taken away users of Moments!

Therefore, from an external perspective, it can be said that WeChat could not withstand the impact of its competitors, so it launched the function of pinning Moments, hoping to use the huge scale of WeChat users to revitalize Moments and consolidate WeChat's position.

From an internal perspective, the Moments, one of the basic components of WeChat, is also not optimistic.

Still in the 2022 financial report, it was mentioned that "the usage time of mini programs and video accounts was two times and three times that of the same period last year respectively, both exceeding the usage time of Moments."

Mini Programs and Video Accounts, which are the second growth curve of WeChat, have grown faster and surpassed the usage time of Moments, but this may be more based on the traffic diversion of Moments users.

It is undeniable that WeChat has been relatively conservative in its functional updates over the years, especially in Moments, which has led to the current dilemma.

If the Moments continues to be weak, then mini programs and video accounts may also fall into a situation of lack of successors in the future. This may be one of the reasons why the Moments needs to change.

Therefore, WeChat is innovating the usage paradigm of Moments at this point in time in the hope that Moments can continue to support the development of mini-programs and video accounts internally.

3. Who can use the pinning function to maximize their benefits?

First of all, Tencent may be the biggest beneficiary.

Because we learn from the experience of our "predecessors" - most of the pinning functions are not free, and either cost money or time.

You need to open a membership on Weibo, and different members have different numbers of pinned posts, with a strict hierarchy.

Xiaohongshu requires users to publish more than or equal to 20 notes.

Zhihu said that I want both. One way is to purchase a Yanxuan membership, and the other way is to upgrade the account to LV5 or above, and the quantity is also limited.

Given Tencent’s past “great achievements”, it is not impossible to make the Moments pinning function a paid experience project in the future.

Even though it is free, WeChat can set regulations on the length of time users spend online, the number of times they post, etc., to reward more active users and stimulate other users, ultimately increasing user stickiness in the Moments.

Longer usage time and stronger stickiness represent higher commercial value.

For WeChat, Moments is a social product superimposed on high-frequency communication scenarios, and it is also an important channel for WeChat's commercialization.

Making money, doing business, is not shameful.

Secondly, WeChat merchants may be the second largest beneficiary group after Tencent.

The pinning function is tailor-made for them - they can pin store links, QR codes, etc. so that "target users" can see them first.

However, this function also has limitations, because if we want to see someone's pinned content, we need to actively click on the avatar and then click on the circle of friends to see it. Therefore, it is more useful for buyer users who always pay attention to product trends and have greater demands in a certain field.

In addition, it is very helpful for users who want to build private domain ecosystems and IPs.

First, you can pin customer service information to the top, including contact numbers, WeChat IDs, related business introductions, official WeChat groups, etc., and set the number of pictures based on the amount of information to help users understand the business as quickly as possible and reach users as soon as possible.

Secondly, product activity information can be pinned to the top. When a user contacts you for the first time through WeChat or checks your Moments, you can pin recent featured products, promotional activities, discount policies, etc. to the top to help users quickly identify their needs.

The third is to pin personal honors, which is similar to the personal identity display on Weibo. It is mainly for users who want to build their personal IP. The pinned content can be the honors they have won in community operations, course production, internal and external training and other related activities to highlight their competitiveness, world outlook, praise, popularity, etc. It is recommended not to have too many, just highlight the essence.

Finally, for ordinary users, I feel that emotional value is higher than monetary value.

On April 19, 2012, WeChat Moments emerged as a dark horse and dominated the territory of social networking among acquaintances in the social battlefield.

Eleven years have passed, and WeChat QR codes have long replaced personal business cards to become a new social channel. However, in this process, WeChat Moments has also gone from carnival to dullness.

Everyone has more and more WeChat friends, but the embarrassing scene is that every time a new friend is added, users often have to face the archaeology of the circle of friends - piecing together the life trajectory of a stranger along the context of the circle of friends.

A survey conducted by China Youth Daily showed that 51.9% of users chose to be visible for three days because they “didn’t want new friends to know too much about their past.”

In addition, according to official data released by WeChat, more than 200 million users have quietly set their Moments to be visible for three days.

Many people even leave only a cold dividing line in their circle of friends.

The decline in user activity also reflects the current dilemma of WeChat: How to find a balance between personalization and popularization when it has a huge user base of 1.3 billion?

WeChat needs to allow more people to “return” to the circle of friends!

The feature of pinning Moments to the top may be able to solve this problem.

Users can display their personal information such as interests and hobbies at the top, so that even a stranger can read a lot of information from it, and thus quickly understand you and establish a relationship more quickly.

4. Which circle of friends would you pin?

Having said that, our opinions on the pinning function of Moments have come to an end.

Looking at the internal testing functions of WeChat throughout its history, not all functions will survive. However, in this era of information explosion, WeChat once again allows information to be displayed and organized with people at the center, and uses the most widely accepted model at present - Moments. Its operating difficulty is far lower than that of video accounts and official accounts with higher thresholds.

As the first-level self-media in the WeChat ecosystem, it has been given the simplest editing function - pinning, which transcends time and space and greatly improves the efficiency of information transmission. If it can be used well, then no matter what the purpose is, it will be a good attempt.

At the same time, it can also be seen that as a national-level application, every change to WeChat Moments affects the usage experience of hundreds of millions of people, and it is difficult to balance the preferences of everyone.

Although more and more people have shifted their social media channels, Moments is still the first choice for announcing important moments in life, such as passing the postgraduate entrance exam, getting married, and settling down in first-tier cities...

In the future, we cannot judge in which direction WeChat Moments will push forward, but as a part of the lives of 1.3 billion users, it has become a footnote to the lifestyle in the mobile Internet era.

Because this feature is still in the beta stage, only a small number of WeChat users with version 8.0.34 can use it. The official release date of this feature is not yet determined. If this feature is officially released, which Moments post would you pin to the top?

Author: Huang He understands operations

Source: WeChat public account: Huanghe understands operations