微信的大煩惱 Overloaded China users battle WeChat fatigue
China’s most popular chat app has seen off rivals in China such as Alibaba’s Laiwang, Korean-Japanese Line and Facebook’s WhatsApp. But now some users of WeChat — and even its creator — say it is threatened by a greater homegrown challenge: clutter.
中國最受歡迎的聊天應用“微信”(WeChat)在國內將競爭對手遠遠甩在了身後，如阿里巴巴(Alibaba)的來往(Laiwang)、擁有日韓背景的Line以及Facebook旗下的WhatsApp。但眼下卻有一些使用者表示，微信正面臨一個更大的而且源於自身的挑戰：資訊龐雜。而微信的創造者也看到了這個問題。
Since its launch in 2011, WeChat, or Weixin as it is more commonly known in China, has become synonymous with the mobile internet for China’s 525m smartphone users, an addictive way to chat online that has won international praise for its minimalist design.
自2011年推出以來，對中國5.25億的智慧手機使用者而言，微信已成為“移動網際網路”的代名詞。這種讓人沉迷的線上聊天方式還因其極簡的設計贏得了國際讚譽。
It is hard to overstate the pervasiveness of WeChat in Chinese life — the app is a phone, messenger, video conference, ecommerce platform and gaming console, not to mention noodle delivery service, for a nation of people in love with their smartphones. Many a new relationship is sealed with the ritual smartphone “scan” of one anothers’ WeChat QR code.
可以毫不誇張地說，微信已融入了中國人生活的方方面面——對酷愛智慧手機的中國人來說，這款應用既可以通電話、發訊息、進行視訊會議，也是電子商務及遊戲平臺，更別提還有送餐上門服務。人們只需用智慧手機相互“掃描”對方的微信二維碼，新的朋友關係便可以馬上建立。
But popularity has come at a price: users say they are being overloaded with everything from messages to cartoon gifs to ads.
但微信的普及也是有代價的：有使用者表示，微信上大量的資訊——從文字資訊到卡通動態圖到廣告——已讓他們不堪其擾。
Xie Huang Huang, writing on his microblog, says he hesitates to open up his WeChat because he will be flooded with messages. “I was attracted to WeChat because I thought it was virgin land in an age of information explosion. But now it is fragmented, overwhelming and useless.”
謝黃黃（音）在自己的微博上寫道，他現在都不太願意開啟微信了，因為一開啟就會被大量資訊淹沒。他說，以前被微信吸引，是因為覺得它是資訊爆炸時代的一塊處女地，但現在微信上的資訊變得碎片化、令人應接不暇，也沒什麼用。
In January, China’s official news agency Xinhua devoted an editorial to “WeChat fatigue”, saying an estimated 25 per cent of users check it more than 30 times per day. “We have been abducted by an explosion of rubbish” on WeChat, it said.
今年1月，中國官方通訊社新華社(Xinhua)發表了一篇有關“微信疲勞”的評論，稱約有25%的使用者每天檢視微信超過30次。文章稱，微信上的“資訊垃圾”俘虜了我們。
“Everyday we find ourselves surrounded by noisy WeChat groups, the endless memories posts of friends and family, they have become our daily essentials. No one likes being kidnapped by WeChat, but each of us have our own reasons for not being able to give up WeChat.”
“很多人起床第一件事和睡前最後一件事，都是檢視微信；各種吵吵鬧鬧的微信群、親朋好友的朋友圈，已成為我們每天的必修課……沒有誰喜歡被微信綁架，但每個人都有太多理由放不下微信。”
The app is central to the future of Tencent, China’s most valuable internet company with a market capitalisation of $185bn, which has staked its business model on the success of its star platform.
騰訊(Tencent)是中國最具價值的網際網路公司，市值1850億美元，而微信在騰訊的未來發展中處於核心地位——騰訊已將其商業模式押注在這款明星平臺的成功上。
Tencent makes most of its money from gaming but also boasts interests in everything from online video through car hailing to food delivery. It wants to use WeChat as the gateway platform for users to access these services — all now embedded in WeChat, much like apps within an app. Tencent hopes this will one day make it unnecessary to use rival apps.
騰訊大多數利潤來自遊戲，但對其他許多領域——從線上視訊、叫車服務到美食外賣——也都表現出強烈的興趣。騰訊想利用微信作為使用者獲得這些服務的入口平臺——所有這些服務如今都被嵌入了微信，就像在一款應用中嵌入許多其他應用。騰訊希望，將來有一天，它可以無需再使用競爭對手的應用。
While the service’s user base is growing — Tencent said the number of active WeChat accounts rose 39 per cent last year to 697m — there are some worrying precedents for WeChat’s clutter problem.
雖然微信的使用者基礎在不斷擴大——騰訊表示，微信活躍賬號的數量去年增加了39%，至6.97億——但關於微信“資訊太雜”的問題，存在一些令人擔憂的前車之鑑。
Sina Weibo, for example, China’s version of Twitter, was once a competitor, but lost the social media crown to WeChat after it introduced advertising on a large scale.
例如，被稱為中國版Twitter的新浪微博(Sina Weibo)曾是微信的競爭對手，但在大規模引入廣告之後，便向微信讓出了社交媒體頭把交椅的位置。
“Weibo hit its peak in 2011; it was becoming too commercialised, everyone was clamouring for attention and marketing was going too far,” says Zhang Yi, head of Guangzhou-based internet consultancy iMedia. “I think WeChat will soon face the same problem.”
“微博在2011年達到巔峰，但後來變得過於商業化，每個人都在通過各種手段吸引注意力，營銷做得太過了，”廣州網際網路諮詢公司艾媒諮詢(iiMedia)負責人張毅表示，“我認為微信很快就會面臨同樣的問題。”
WeChat has been careful with introducing advertising — starting in 2015 — so as not to bombard users.
微信對於引入廣告（始於2015年）一直保持謹慎，以免對使用者造成過大幹擾。
Much of that is down to Zhang Xiaolong, WeChat’s reclusive creator, who is a cult figure among Chinese internet users. “Zhang is a mysophobic product manager who wants to keep WeChat detached from the commercial world,” according to Beijing-based tech blogger Zong Ning.
這在很大程度上要歸功於行事低調的微信創始人張小龍——受中國網際網路使用者頂禮膜拜的偶像。北京的科技博主宗寧表示：“張小龍是一位有不潔恐怖症的產品經理，他想要保持微信與商業世界的距離。”
While he is rarely seen in public, Mr Zhang made a surprise appearance on a podcast in January. The greatest challenge for WeChat, he told his online audience, “is not how much more we can do, but how many things we can screen and block . . . it takes a lot of work so that WeChat remains uncluttered”.
雖然張小龍很少在公開場合露面，但今年1月，他出人意料地現身一檔播客節目。他對線上觀眾表示，微信面臨的最大挑戰“不是在於我們再多做多少事情，而是我們能夠擋掉多少事情……需要做很多事情才能讓微信裡面的內容非常乾淨”。
The same week his podcast appeared, WeChat began dealing with clutter, deleting or suspending blog accounts that were spamming users with messages.
上述播客釋出的同一周，微信開始著手處理資訊龐雜的問題，刪除或暫時關閉那些向用戶濫發資訊的公眾號。
As for ads, “good commercialisation does not harass users and only reaches its targeted users”, he said. “We don’t want users to have so many messages that they can never finish dealing with them.”
至於廣告，“好的商業化應該是不騷擾使用者，並且是隻觸達他需要觸達的那一部分使用者”，他說，“我們不想讓使用者在微信裡面永遠都有處理不完的事情。”
Observers said Mr Zhang appeared to be delivering a message not just to the public, but to Tencent’s management, amid pressure to “monetise” WeChat by increasing advertising and adding functions.
觀察人士表示，張小龍似乎不僅是在向公眾，也是在向騰訊管理層傳遞一種資訊，因為他正面臨通過增加廣告、新增功能來讓微信創收的壓力。
“WeChat is having a hard time finding the middle path, a balance between monetisation and living up to Zhang Xiaolong’s vision,” said Mr Zong, the blogger.
宗寧表示：“微信正在艱難地尋找一條中間道路，在創收與實現張小龍的理想之間尋找平衡點。”
Sure enough, in an earnings call last month, investment bank analysts peppered Tencent executives with questions about plans for “monetising” WeChat. “They all wanted to know when they are going to milk this cow,” said Mark Natkin of Beijing-based Marbridge Consulting.
果不出所料，在上月的電話財報會議上，投資銀行的分析師們紛紛向騰訊高管提出有關微信“創收”計劃的問題。北京邁博瑞諮詢(Marbridge Consulting)的馬克•納特金(Mark Natkins)說：“他們都想知道，騰訊打算什麼時候讓這頭奶牛下奶。”
Martin Lau, president of Tencent, resisted pressure from analysts. “I would say [WeChat] is an ad format and ad platform that carries significant long-term opportunities. But it’s an important engagement tool for our users. So we want to do it slowly and do it right,” he said in the same earnings call.
騰訊總裁劉熾平(Martin Lau)頂住了來自分析師們的壓力，他在那次電話會議中表示：“我可以說（微信）是一種廣告形式與廣告平臺，蘊含著巨大、長遠的機遇。但它也是我們使用者重要的交流工具。所以，我們想慢慢來，以正確的方式來做這件事。”
Tencent has told analysts that it puts no more than one ad into WeChat’s Facebook-like “moments” feed every 24 hours, though users say they have seen two or three a day.
騰訊對投行分析師們表示，每24小時至多向微信朋友圈投放一個廣告，但有使用者稱曾經一天見過兩三個廣告。
New advertising on WeChat has not hurt its popularity — active user accounts jumped 37 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2015 compared with a year ago, despite a 118 per cent annual year-on-year rise in online advertising revenues that Tencent said was partly driven by new ads.
朋友圈廣告並未對其受歡迎程度造成影響。2015年第四季度，活躍使用者賬號同比激增37%，而網路廣告業務收入同比增長118%——騰訊稱部分是由新廣告形式推動的。
But analysts say Tencent must be careful not to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Mr Zong says: “WeChat contributes about $40bn of Tencent’s valuation and it must live up to that with investors.”
但分析師們稱，騰訊必須謹慎，不要殺雞取卵。宗寧說：“微信在騰訊的估值中大約佔400億美元，它在這方面一定不能辜負投資者。”
