In early 2019, when Wang Xin launched an anonymous social App called toilet MT, Ma Huateng commented on moments: "negative anonymous social networking is a clear-cut opposition, needless to say." Now, after "Youji", Tencent has once again launched the anonymous social product "Light meeting and making Friends".

Tech Planet exclusively learned that recently Tencent officially launched a new anonymous emotional social product "Light meeting and making Friends". The product positioning is to use anonymous ways to record the real emotional chat products. Through the product experience, the core game of "meeting friends by light" is very much like magnifying the message in a bottle function that Wechat, QQ and QQ Mail have all gone offline.

According to the internal "user agreement" of the product, we can see that the developer of Lantern encounter is Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. This is the fifth social App launched by Tencent this year, following the previous launch of 4 App models: cat call, light chat, Youji and friends, which focus on acquaintances or semi-acquaintances.

Compared with the previous four, Tencent's lantern meeting and making friends this time is more interesting. Ma Huateng has always been very cautious about anonymous socializing, so this launch shows Tencent's determination to explore new social fields.

The Lantern version of message in a bottle

After experiencing Tech Planet, I found that Lantern meeting and making Friends is more like an upgraded version of Wechat message in a bottle. The difference is that light meeting and making friends gather the words of strangers into the square, allowing users to operate freely.

From the product point of view, the main function of the lamp to make friends is to chat anonymously, and the product design is divided into four functions: "square", "talking", "release", "attention" and "mine".

There are all kinds of topics shared by anonymous users in the square. If users are interested, they can follow each other or give likes (similar to the logo of the Sun), or they can comment by talking. The topic after the comment will be displayed in the other person's talking bar, so that you can have a further conversation with the other person.

In addition, users can actively publish pictures and text to meet like-minded friends and chat, and currently do not support the release of video content.

In fact, BABA also launched an anonymous social product called "Thousand ears" earlier, which is very similar to Tencent's light encounter, and major factories have entered the anonymous social field one after another, perhaps taking a fancy to this new traffic pool.

Challenges and opportunities of anonymous social interaction

Like many "tree hole" products, the most popular "can" was an anonymous social platform. No avatars, random nicknames, no followers, no retweets and favorites. The user has no identity in it. In a can, no one knows who you are.

As an anonymous social product, the biggest problem is auditing. Earlier, one can was rectified because it was filled with all kinds of uncomfortable content, so a can was added with a sealing mechanism. Once reported and verified, the device in use will not be able to register and use a new can of account, and can only be used by a different device.

This extremely high privacy and security design has led to a renewed increase in users' love for a can, which gave a beautiful figure in January: 5 million registered users. This is the best among the many anonymous social products at that time.

But these features also lead to a jar that is always a tree hole product that aggregates content, unable to precipitate the user relationship chain and become a social product. Such a "one-off" social product is often copied by other anonymous social products. Even optimized into a new product, eventually itself will inevitably be eliminated.

By the end of July this year, the can team was officially disbanded, just one year after it was launched.

At the beginning of the year, Wang Xin made an anonymous social product called toilet MT. The activation function is mainly anonymous and time-limited group chat. There are two sections on the main page: "topic" and "chat". In the "topic" section, you can see the topics initiated by nearby people, and the "chat" section can see the topics you participate in.

Later, because Wechat worried that anonymous social networking such as toilet MT would lead to pornography, violence and other problems, it blocked its sharing links on the day of its release, and then the toilet MT gradually disappeared from people's view.

Wechat is also right to worry. The biggest problem with anonymous social networking is auditing, because users can post any content because of the privacy of their identities, which will have a negative impact on Wechat's own users.

Of course, Wechat ruthless, even its own functions will be removed from the shelves. Some lawbreakers will take advantage of message in a bottle's function to spread pornographic content and illegally collect fees, which has formed a grey industrial chain. Moreover, lawbreakers made "sending message in a bottle" into a characteristic "occupation". Lawbreakers spread pornographic gambling and other information through WeChat groups and paid money according to the terms, which changed message in a bottle's principle of use.

In the end, Wechat officially removed the function of message in a bottle in version 7.0.4. But it is undeniable that message in a bottle helped QQ Mail break through 10 million users in just half a year, surpassing NetEase, Inc's mailbox to become the first; he also helped Wechat get a large number of users at the beginning of the birth of Wechat.

Even if there are many problems with anonymous socializing, once you can control it, it will become a new promised land of social communication. Most of the acquaintances of young people socialize in QQ and Wechat, where they can't express their true feelings, and some even come up with slogans to escape from their moments. The anonymous way of socializing may be more suitable for the social needs of these people.

According to data from Ai Media Consulting, the number of domestic users socializing with strangers reached 622 million in 2019, and the number is increasing year by year. It also reveals that there is a great chance of success in the experimental field of anonymous social interaction.

Anonymous socializing has always been the darling of social life, so there is no shortage of troublemakers. BABA launched the emotional anonymous social product Thousand ears in March. Baidu, Inc. launched the handset, an anonymous social product mainly aimed at college students, in November. The big companies have entered the war one after another, which reveals their desire for a new type of social dominance.

In the battlefield of anonymous social interaction, there has been a constant battle and reshuffle. Will Tencent's light meet and make friends end the war?