The biggest crisis of WeChat Official Accounts is that it is becoming more and more similar to Douyin.

I know you must have a question: how could WeChat Official Accounts be similar to Douyin? 

One is text-and-image based, the other is video-based, two completely different content formats. 

Don't rush, you can first recall some changes in your daily use of Official Accounts, and I can also list a few for you. 

First, the Official Account feed has changed from low-dynamic to high-dynamic.

What does that mean? 

Before answering this question, I would like to take you back to the original appearance of WeChat Official Accounts and the original positioning of this product. 

As an author who has written Official Account articles for 13 years, I have watched it iterate step by step. 

The earliest Official Accounts adopted a strict subscription system. To put it simply, you can only see the push content of the accounts you follow in the Official Account list. 

Content updates only occur when there are new pushes, which is a low-dynamic state.

A little earlier, before Official Accounts were folded and renamed "Subscription Accounts", the messages of Official Accounts at that time appeared in the first-level message list on the home page of WeChat. 

When you received content from a followed Official Account at that time, it was just like receiving a message from a friend, with a red digital notification. 

Therefore, your own Official Account list is more like a user-filtered favorites folder, or a self-subscribed information source. 

Your Official Account feed will have new messages only when there are new pushes. When there are no new pushes, you can view all historical content arranged in chronological order. 

Now, this rule has been completely broken. 

The content you see in the Official Account feed is not necessarily pushed by the accounts you follow, and you may not see the content released by the accounts you follow immediately. 

The original function of the information source screened by users has failed. Official Accounts bring content beyond the accounts users follow through three algorithm mechanisms: "For You", "Friends' Recommendations" and "News Flash".

Speaking of this, I would like to talk about the original positioning of the Official Account product. 

I remember that Zhang Xiaolong once said at the WeChat Open Class in a certain year that Official Accounts were not originally designed for self-media to write articles. The original intention was to build "a subscription-based message channel to replace spam text messages", with the positioning of a service platform.

Please note that its positioning is a "service platform", which mainly realizes the subscription-based message function to replace spam text messages. 

Younger readers may not know that in 2012 when Official Accounts were born, all kinds of spam text messages were rampant. As long as your mobile phone number was leaked, you would basically receive all kinds of spam information every day, although this situation still exists today. 

Including the blacklist and spam text message functions that appeared on mobile phones later, they were actually designed to solve such problems. 

At the beginning, Official Accounts wanted to build a function that was screened and actively subscribed by users, specially provided for service providers, who could be brand operators or small business owners, but the first to be widely used was the media. 

You can pay attention to an old function that still exists in Official Accounts, called "Read Original Article". 

This function is located at the bottom left of the article, next to the reading volume data. It is a function that existed when Official Accounts were launched, and it is the archaeological evidence of the original positioning. 

Just imagine, now that an Official Account article itself is complete content, why do we still need an external link function of "Read Original Article"? 

Because this function was prepared for the scenario of subscription-based text messages at that time. The main body of the Official Account was only an index and general description, and the complete information was outside the Official Account platform.

Let me talk about another usage scenario I had at that time. I had a CSDN blog with many articles written, and then I registered an Official Account. 

My approach was to put the beginning of an article on CSDN in the Official Account, and then put the original CSDN article link in the "Read Original Article" link of the Official Account. 

Perhaps you have also seen that this is to divert the traffic of the Official Account to the blog, but later this logic was completely reversed. 

In the 14 years since its birth, the feed of Official Accounts has changed from relatively static to completely dynamic. 

How dynamic is this? 

To this end, I deliberately observed and tested it, and show you the results. 

Look carefully at the time marked by my red box, all are around 10 p.m., the shortest interval is 1 minute, and the longest interval is 2 minutes. 

You will find that the content I see every time I enter the Official Account feed is different. 

There are Video Account content, followed text and images, platform news flashes, and algorithm-recommended content from "For You". If you add friends' recommendations, there are 5 types of information sources in total.

If you haven't noticed it carefully, you can re-enter the Official Account feed continuously in a short period of time to observe, or exit WeChat to the background and then re-enter to observe. 

This feeling is just like every time you open Douyin, everything is new and different every time. 

Moreover, even the content released by the accounts you follow may be pushed to you several hours later. 

Second, the content distribution logic of Official Accounts has changed.

As mentioned earlier, the early distribution method of Official Accounts for content was subscription-based. When the accounts you follow released content, you would receive it immediately. 

If you follow a lot of people and they all release content, the content will be sorted in chronological order. 

Now, this rule has been completely broken in the current feed list. 

In the past, most of the content you saw was released by the accounts you followed, but now most of the content you see is brought to you by the algorithm mechanism. 

I have observed that at the same time, only one piece of content released by the account you follow will appear at the top of the Official Account feed, and it is not necessarily the latest one, it may be content from several hours or even more than ten hours ago. 

Just like the two screenshots below, the difference is less than 1 minute, but the content of the feed is completely different. 

There is an exception here, that is, the content released by the Official Accounts you often read or the accounts you have starred. 

When accounts that meet these two conditions release content, you will still most likely receive it immediately. 

If you want to know which accounts are your frequently read accounts, in fact, they have already appeared in the avatar bar at the top of your Official Account feed. 

To be honest, these Official Accounts are very happy to have readers like you, because you still maintain a strong bond with them. 

Because once an account is out of your "frequently viewed" category, the bond between you will become weaker and weaker, even if you still follow it. 

Intuitively, the frequency of seeing the content released by this account in the Official Account feed will gradually decrease. 

It's not that you can no longer see the content released by the accounts you follow, but that the content distribution logic of Official Accounts has changed. 

I guess your reading habits, opening time periods, topics you may be interested in, and content that your friends are watching will all become influencing factors for content distribution.

In other words, the content you see is no longer determined by which accounts you follow, but by the algorithm, and the latter accounts for a larger proportion. 

Now when you open the Official Account feed and scroll down all the way, you will understand the change I am talking about. 

This feeling is very similar to opening Douyin to scroll videos. You can still see the videos released by the accounts you follow, but most of them are recommended by the algorithm according to your preferences. 

Even on Douyin, the content released by the accounts you follow is not seen immediately, but is sandwiched in the algorithm feed. 

Combining the "high-dynamic feed" mentioned in the first point and the "feed distribution logic" mentioned here, although Official Accounts are text-and-image based content, their mechanism is indeed more and more similar to Douyin. 

Third, the relationship between creators and readers has changed.

Let me talk about some of my observations and intuitive feelings, which may not be correct. 

First of all, the "total amount of content information" that readers see in Official Accounts is much higher than in the past. 

In layman's terms, readers see more articles. 

There are not only articles, but also videos. Not only from the people you follow, but also from what your friends are watching and platform recommendations. 

The increase in the total amount of content information brings a benefit, which allows readers to get out of the information cocoon and have the opportunity to see other content released by accounts they do not follow. 

At the same time, it also brings a change: readers have a wider range of choices, but their willingness to independently filter has decreased. 

I don't know if other people have this feeling, but now the frequency of my following new Official Accounts has been greatly reduced. 

I counted the Official Accounts I have followed, and most of them were followed a long time ago. 

It's not that I stopped contacting new content, but the aforementioned increase in the total amount of information allows me to access new content through more dimensions, without needing to obtain new content through the strong binding mode of following. 

To put it bluntly, since I can see similar content every day and it will be automatically pushed to me, I no longer have the sense of regret that I will miss it if I don't follow. 

Because subconsciously you will know that there will be similar content next time. The sense of loss that you would miss it if you didn't follow in the past has quietly changed.

The accounts worthy of my follow must be those that I highly recognize, resonate with, and look forward to. 

However, the algorithm rarely brings me such target accounts at present, and the algorithm feed makes people shift their attention from the account to the content itself. 

Therefore, I think the relationship between creators and readers has become looser, and it is not so easy to establish a connection. 

In the past, when seeing a good piece of content, people were afraid of missing it, so they followed it first. 

Now even if you miss it, your subconscious tells you that you will encounter similar content next time, unless that content meets the three points I mentioned earlier. 

In addition, when communicating with some creator friends, we all have a feeling that the exposure rate of our own content has decreased. 

After a piece of content is released, it is not necessarily immediately pushed to readers' Official Account feeds. 

There may be a lag, which is related to the reader's reading habits or time point, and also related to whether he is a frequent reader. 

Obviously, Official Accounts tend to favor the reader side at this point. They are filtering and evaluating for readers, so as to decide when to send whose content to your feed. 

Of course, this is just our feeling, which does not mean that it is objectively the case. 

If we want to talk about the objective existing situation, it is that the traffic of image posts is better than that of articles now, and I have tried many times myself. 

I worked hard to write a 3000-word long article with both pictures and texts, but its reading volume is indeed not as good as a pure text article of less than 1000 words. 

Image posts are also divided into two types, one is the pure text post mentioned earlier, and the other is the post with pictures and texts, whose form is similar to Xiaohongshu. 

Interestingly, the image post content with pictures even appeared in the entrance of "Service Accounts". 

You know, in the past, Service Accounts only placed service messages or content pushed by Service Accounts. 

Now, it is equivalent to integrating Official Account content into it, and the two are merged together. 

The form adopts a two-column feed, which is the Xiaohongshu mode, and when publishing in the background, it will also prompt you that posts with pictures will get better support. 

Obviously, the Official Accounts team is strongly promoting image posts. 

Moreover, Official Accounts no longer restrict that you can only publish one piece of content a day, but only give you one chance to send mass messages. 

Even so, content that is not mass-sent does not mean that your readers cannot see it, they can still see it in the Official Account feed. 

So you will find that now creators may post two or even multiple pieces of content a day. 

Finally, I want to talk about a topic: What is the biggest crisis of Official Accounts?

I think perhaps it is the process that it is becoming more and more similar to Douyin. 

Why do I say that "being similar to Douyin" itself is a crisis?

Just think about it, among all content platforms, what is the most unique thing about Official Accounts?

I think it is "follow and reach".

This is also what the Official Account product was originally positioned to be, allowing users to filter and actively subscribe, so as to build a bond between both sides.

Whoever you follow, when they release content, you can see it. This rule establishes a very stable connection between creators and readers.

Creators know that what they write can be seen by their fans, so they are willing to spend time polishing the content. Readers know that following an account will not make them miss updates, so they are willing to take