Rebirth 10: I'm a Promoter at Tencent

Wednesday, 12:17 AM.

The lights in the "garage" were a pale white. Because it was the release date of the new version, Lin Shen allowed the entire team to work overtime until midnight. However, the WeChat 1.1 version, which should have been pushed out at midnight, was still lying quietly on the server, like a countdown that had been paused.

After checking the compilation log for the third time, Cheng Xiangdong finally couldn't help but look up: "Boss, all the tests have passed, are we... really not going to release it?"

His voice sounded somewhat abrupt in the silence.

The sound of keyboard typing gradually stopped.

Li Yue looked up from the product documentation, Wang Hao paused his code review, and Lu Chuan closed the public opinion monitoring page. Everyone's gaze began to drift, almost imperceptibly, towards that workstation in the room.

At that moment, Lin Shen stopped typing.

He closed the document he had just finished editing, and a Weibo post published at 11 p.m. was clearly displayed in the center of the screen:

[Xiaomi Technology] Xiaomi will hold its first product launch event tomorrow at 10:00 AM.

This time, we're not just talking about systems.

The accompanying image is an orange abstract background with a simple dialog box icon in the center. No further information is provided, but the meaning couldn't be clearer.

Seeing that Lin Shen had finished his work, Lu Chuan was the first to come over: "Brother Shen, is Xiaomi going to release a social media app too? This is... not right. Last month when they released MIUI, they just posted it on the forum, keeping it incredibly low-key. This time they're actually going to hold an offline launch event? And at the National Convention Center?"

Li Yue had already pulled up the detailed information from the invitation and said, "There are over a hundred media outlets on the list, more than twenty investment institutions are here, and the venue can hold five hundred people. This isn't a product launch anymore, is it all for a social media app?"

"They're treating this social media app as Xiaomi's first official launch," Lin Shen finally said. He knew very well that the earlier release of WeChat had led to this unusually large-scale launch event, and Lei Jun intended to use this format to reverse the fact that MiTalk had been released later.

He continued, "MIUI is a test product for geeks to play with, while MiTalk is a consumer product for everyone. What they want is not just to release a product, but more like to announce the birth of a company."

MiTalk's total user base: estimated at 9.

"They're catching up very quickly." Cheng Xiangdong pushed up his glasses, staring at the two almost parallel growth curves on the screen. "Xiaomi's launch event was incredibly well-organized; it almost wiped out our week-long gap."

"What about user feedback?" Lin Shen asked Lu Chuan.

"Brother Shen, the hidden group chat feature seems to have failed," Lu Chuan said somewhat helplessly. He pulled up a comment: "WeChat updated to version 1.1, which supposedly has a group chat function, but I can't find the group chat button anywhere. It's not in the settings either. Is it not available yet?"

This feedback opened a floodgate, and in the next ten minutes, similar questions began to emerge:

"Same question, where is the group chat entry point?"

"The update log mentions 'hidden links,' but in practice, it works no differently than version 1.0!"

Has anyone figured out how to create a group chat?

"I updated to WeChat 1.1, but I don't feel any difference."

Lu Chuan quickly flipped through the pages, his expression a mix of amusement and exasperation: "They...they really are looking for the 'button'."

"Because MiTalk has a button." Lin Shen pulled up a screenshot of the MiTalk interface—the orange "Create Group Chat" button was very conspicuous in the upper right corner. "Users have been educated and think that social software should be like this."

Just then, Li Yue suddenly said, "Wait... MiTalk has also given feedback."

She switched to a monitoring page, which was a real-time snapshot of the MiTalk official forum. A highlighted post read:

"Why does creating a group require access to my contacts? I just want to invite a few online friends to play games together; I don't want the software to know all my contacts!"

Dozens of replies followed:

"+1, this design is too domineering."

"If I disable permissions, I can't use group chat. What kind of logic is that?"

"WeChat doesn't seem to have this problem..."

Lin Shen narrowed his eyes slightly as he looked at the discussion: "See? The issues are starting to diverge."

At 8:30 p.m., a turning point occurred.

On a tech forum, a user with the ID "Product Experience Specialist" posted a practical test tutorial: "WeChat 1.1 Group Chat Function Test: It's Not That You Can't Find It, It's That It's Too Smart".

The tutorial demonstrates in detail how "hidden connections" work, and concludes with a comparative analysis:

"For comparison, I also tested MiTalk's group chat function. MiTalk's method is: click the button -> select contacts -> create group. It's simple and straightforward, but there are two problems: first, you must grant access to your contacts; second, after creating a group, the system will save the group to your contacts by default, which needs to be manually canceled."

"WeChat's approach is completely different: when you're chatting normally, the system analyzes keywords locally and subtly alerts you when it detects that you're discussing the same thing. You can use it even without granting permissions, and it will ask if you want to save the chat after creating a group."

"The two have roughly the same number of users, with WeChat currently at 10.1 and MiTalk at 9.9, but their design philosophies are worlds apart. One is saying, 'Give me your social relationships, and I'll manage them for you'; the other is saying, 'You chat as you please, and I'll provide a tool when needed.'"

This post was forwarded thousands of times within half an hour.

More importantly, spontaneous comparisons began to appear in the comments section:

"I tried it, and creating a group on MiTalk is indeed fast, but I always feel like I'm being held hostage."

"WeChat's design takes time. After the initial activation, subsequent features are added, making it very easy. However, there is an additional learning curve. I have carefully read WeChat's privacy policy and feel very reassured."

At 9 PM, the data began to speak.

WeChat data shows that the tutorial was shared over 3,000 times within WeChat—meaning users were spontaneously teaching other users. The usage rate of the "Hidden Links" feature also rebounded from 25% in the afternoon to 34%.

Meanwhile, MiTalk's data showed subtle changes: although the total number of users surpassed 100,000 at 9:30 PM, its rating on the iOS App Store dropped from 4.3 to 4.1. Among the newly emerging negative reviews, keywords related to "permissions" and "privacy" accounted for 53%.

Privacy issues are starting to escalate...