It's already 2023, who is still using QQ?

Tech 2023-05-15 13:09:48 Source: Network

#This article is produced for the "Original Incentive Plan" where everyone is a product manager.After the birth of WeChat, it quickly took over people's lives and work, and many people suffered unbearably

#This article is produced for the "Original Incentive Plan" where everyone is a product manager.
After the birth of WeChat, it quickly took over people's lives and work, and many people suffered unbearably. I don't want to be "kidnapped" by WeChat, and I can't do without WeChat at all times. As a relatively ancient social product, QQ should have declined after the emergence of WeChat, but to this day, there are still many people active on QQ. Who is using QQ? What are they doing with QQ? The author of this article has observed and analyzed this, let's take a look together.

How long has it been since you opened QQ

Opening the QQ interface on my phone, I looked at the phone interface that had been stuck due to a large influx of group messages, feeling a long-awaited strangeness.

Today, when online chat and social networking are almost monopolized by WeChat, QQ has already become a supporting role in my social life. If it weren't for a netizen who hadn't been in contact for a long time suddenly sending a message on QQ, the next time I would open QQ would still be unknown. In the QQ message page that opened, apart from the one urging me to open QQ, there were only a large number of irrelevant group messages and system pushes left - most of the friends who used to communicate with QQ have also switched to other social platforms.

This phenomenon is not an exception. For many people, today's QQ is only left as a backup option in the application list. Since the highest number of QQ users in 2018, the growth rate of QQ users has been decreasing every year, and even slowly losing.

But even though I rarely use QQ anymore, every time I change my device, I still put it in a convenient place on the desktop to open it, because to this day, some people still insist on using QQ, and I still need to keep QQ to stay in touch with them.

Who are these people? Why are they still insisting on using QQ?

1 Who still insists on using QQ?

Opening the QQ friend list, there are not as many avatars still on as before, but they also account for at least half; In the message list, there are actually quite a few groups with recently pop-up messages. But by clicking on these still lit avatars, most of them remain in a "leave" or "leave a message" state, always online, and there are not many people who can respond in a timely manner.

My QQ account was opened during my student days, when QQ was the most versatile social platform, adding most of my family, friends, and classmates; Later on, this account continued to be used in social life and work online, and many groups for work and study, as well as niche netizens, were added. The composition of QQ friends can be said to be complex. QQ friends have a very convenient grouping function. By opening the friend list, you can easily see the online status of friends in different groups.

In my group list, the group with the highest online rate is the group of netizens, who mostly meet friends in forums, post bars, and various interest groups due to the same hobbies. QQ was a popular social media method among many niche enthusiasts at that time, and to this day, many people in the circle still maintain the habit of using QQ. I have noticed that the signature and dynamic update frequency of these people's avatars are also quite high, even the invisible gray avatars are closely followed by the latest updates.

Many professionals still stay on QQ, and most of them maintain their PC online status with infrequent dynamic updates. It seems that QQ is not a means to meet their social needs, but it will definitely indicate their online status, and the response rate when connected is actually high.

There are also many QQ groups, and there are not many group messages related to work resources and courses, but they still maintain a fixed daily update frequency; Some groups formed by various interest circles and enthusiasts are very active. When clicking on the chat interface, there are often active members with a chat level of 90/100 who are constantly speaking enthusiastically, and chat bubbles are still popping up one after another.

Why are these people still active on QQ? I clicked on some of the avatars that were still bouncing with replies and chatted with them, trying to understand the reasons why they insisted on using QQ.

2 Why are they still staying on QQ?

1. An inseparable interest and hobby community

Xiao A is a netizen I met in the QQ group. She started using QQ to communicate with other ACG enthusiasts very early and is still active on QQ to this day. Opening her QQ space, she still maintains high intensity of updates and reposts, and has a lot of interaction with friends. She told me that QQ groups and QQ spaces are more convenient for her to find friends and communicate with them - QQ spaces can interact with many people outside of friends through forwarding, and many large-scale QQ groups are also convenient for bringing people with similar interests together.

At the beginning, we all used post bars and forums, but it was inconvenient for private communication. Sending private messages, videos, pictures, and other content was limited, making QQ groups much easier to use. Then, on QQ space, it used to be popular for everyone to like, comment, and leave messages with each other... QQ space is different from Moments, where things posted are not visible to friends, but can also be shared with each other. Those fun and funny things can be quickly shared in Moments It's really fun to pass it around

Most fans in the subculture circle have a unique social ecology and context. Today, QQ space is still a place for a large part of anime groups to spread information, play and socialize. There will even be a marketing number to relay the interactive content in QQ space to Xiaohongshu, Weibo and other public oriented social platforms.

Many people like us are still playing QQ, and other platforms don't have that flavor, "said Xiao A. Moreover, most people in the circle are using QQ, and people are more accustomed to QQ's communication methods, such as playing QQ spaces and sharing resources in QQ groups. WeChat is more like a social software with strong 'ready to use' attributes in our eyes, which does not meet our requirements

She added that because most of the peer exchanges were friends who met randomly on the Internet, the subculture circle was relatively small, and social software for acquaintances such as WeChat was not suitable for them to communicate - after all, they seldom shared the trends strongly related to real life with online friends, and most of them were reluctant to show the news of subculture circle to real relatives and friends.

There are too many interpersonal relationships in WeChat that intersect but are not familiar and heartfelt. Even senior friends who do not follow small circles around them cannot understand. Instead of finding themselves uninteresting, it's better to switch to a social media app that no one knows me, otherwise it would be too social

2. Social reserves outside of WeChat

This type of social interaction, which is different from traditional online acquaintances, has also attracted users born in the 2000s or even younger to join QQ. In recent years, QQ has shown a phenomenon of low age among its users. In 2019, QQ released a report titled "Social Behavior Data Report of Post-00 Users after QQ: 00", which specifically mentioned the current active post-00s on QQ - the most commonly used QQ function among young people is QQ Dynamics, with 67% of QQ reporting that they come from post-00s users.

They like to "expand" in QQ groups and QQ spaces. Through this way, they interact with more peers and gain a social space that is different from reality and the elders in life. In recent years, QQ has updated new interactive and entertainment features such as centimeter show, small world, and earlier QQ tribes. In the eyes of many people, this is not concise enough: the QQ interface has added many new features and pop-up windows, various privileges, and personalized decorations, making it "flashy but inconvenient".

But in the eyes of the new generation of young people, these redundancies are also the reason why QQ is more attractive. Most of them prefer to use QQ's newly launched membership and other functions, just like the previous generation would pay for the green diamond and yellow diamond logos. Young QQ new users take advantage of these new features to turn QQ into a new social reserve.

3. Another form of 'nail'

Teacher Y is one of the few "adults" in QQ Moments. The content she shares in her QQ space is mostly about family and children, and is not related to the interests and hobbies shared by most young people. The frequency of posting is also not high, but due to professional needs, she still needs to maintain a high frequency of QQ usage.

I often need to share files, reading materials, questions, and reference materials with students. If I send them on WeChat, it's easy to clean them up and there are size restrictions. I teach English, and sometimes I send some oral materials and videos. When a whole group of files is too large, the video quality will also be compressed, which is quite troublesome. Sending them to QQ groups is much more convenient, "said Teacher Y.

In 2020, due to the pandemic, she had to start working as a home-based teacher, and QQ launched functions such as group homework and clock in at the right time. After each class, she will assign homework in the QQ group, and students will directly submit it to the QQ group. Every time she logs in to QQ, she will receive information from students submitting homework. She will make corrections on the spot and the system will send the information back to the students, reminding them that the teacher has already graded the homework. If there is important information that needs to be announced, she can directly update it in the group announcement. The QQ group will record all historical group announcements, and notifications that everyone needs to see can be directly updated in the group announcement and group file. Students can view it at any time, and she does not need to repeat the same information repeatedly for this.

In addition to file transfer, QQ, as another contact method for work that differs from WeChat, also facilitates her differentiation between work and life:

QQ can send messages to group members who are not friends, which is particularly good. If you use WeChat, adding many parents to private messages is actually very troublesome, and deleting it is impolite, "Teacher Y also mentioned. I guess many students don't necessarily want to leave their teachers on their friend list. Everyone is similar, and using QQ is great, not awkward. It's like another enterprise WeChat, but the functions are slightly different

In February this year, during QQ's 24th birthday, Weibo launched a topic called "Why are you still using QQ. Under this topic, we found that there are far more people still persisting in using QQ than we imagine. Some people are constantly chatting with friends for a long time, some are using QQ as a cloud to save files and photos, or just QQ accounts for mobile games... There are also more people who can't bear the various traces left in the glorious era of QQ. In group chats, QQ spaces, signature messages, and QQ friend lists, they leave their youthful memories one by one.

You still need to use QQ to hack with friends online, they won't uninstall

We only have QQ as our contact information, and occasionally everyone comes up to chat

My former friends were all there, and I couldn't do without them

My friend has passed away for many years, and there are only some traces of her past life left on QQ. When I miss her, I go to her homepage to take a look

Since its predecessor was launched in 1999, QQ has gone through 24 seasons. Most of the users who joined QQ during its heyday were born in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as a generation born around the millennium. QQ carries the earliest internet memories and youthful experiences of this group of people during their student years. More than 20 years have passed, and the functions of QQ have become increasingly complex, with a positioning that is vastly different from the original. Some old friends turn around and leave, while others have new blood holding similar emotions, continuing to establish new and wonderful relationships in new communities and environments.

This article was originally published by @ limpide and everyone is a product manager. Reproduction is prohibited without the author's permission.

This article is produced for the "Original Incentive Plan" where everyone is a product manager.

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