WeChat chat history is brewing for paid storage, will you pay?
Some people think it alleviates the pain point of insufficient memory; some people worry about privacy
Our reporter Lu Jia
WeChat plans to launch a paid cloud storage service for chat history. In recent days, this news has continued to be searched, and even topped the list on weekends.
Simply put, in the future, chat records on WeChat can be uploaded to the cloud for storage and backup, but corresponding fees need to be paid.
Will you pay for this paid service?
Plan to pay annually
130 yuan to 180 yuan per year
In your mobile phone, what accounts for the most memory?
Photo?
video?
Downloaded music?
Probably not, the real low-key killer is "occupying memory invisible".
Don't believe me, open your phone and have a look?
Every time I change my phone, it is because of insufficient memory.
A reporter from Qianbao found that his WeChat chat history was 78.6G, accounting for one-third of the phone's memory.
Due to work and life needs, many chat records are difficult to choose to delete.
No wonder the Apple fan club had a dispute over the issue of "128G or 256G is enough" in the comment area. Among users who think 256GB storage is enough, most of them should be WeChat heavy storage users, and WeChat may occupy 50G of space. .
I believe that many friends, like reporters, rarely delete WeChat chat records.
Previously, WeChat chat records could only be saved locally, and there was no cloud storage function. Once deleted, all chat records were gone.
Currently, WeChat only supports migrating the chat history to another device or backing it up to a computer.
However, there are user feedback that the user experience of chat history migration is not good and the speed is very slow.
This is also one of the problems that many users have been criticizing WeChat for.
WeChat seems to have also realized the needs of users, so it has revealed or will launch the news of a paid cloud storage service for chat records.
According to sources, the business may adopt an annual payment model. Apple users may be around 180 yuan/year, and Android users may be around 130 yuan/year.
However, the specific amount of data that can be stored for this fee has not yet been determined.
As of press time, Tencent has not yet given a clear response to Qian Bao reporter on this matter.
Some are expecting and some are worried
Privacy and security are the key
The news that WeChat plans to launch a paid cloud storage service for chat records has attracted attention.
Judging from the feedback from netizens, many users still support WeChat to launch similar functions.
Some netizens said that the chat history can be stored in the cloud, which means that it can be synchronized with multiple devices. The previous chat history can be viewed at any time on a mobile phone or a computer, which is a lot more convenient.
For some WeChat heavy storage users, although there is a charge, they are still looking forward to WeChat's launch of cloud backup and recovery functions for chat history, so that even if the device is lost, the chat history can be restored in the cloud.
In addition, this feature can save the cost of a mobile phone.
Users who chose large storage or even forced to switch phones because WeChat took up a lot of space can now save some money or don't need to switch phones.
There are still some controversies about the charge for this service and the specific storage capacity.
For example: Is 180 yuan expensive a year?
Why are Apple phone users 50 yuan more expensive than Android phone users?
How many chat records can be saved for more than one hundred dollars and so on.
There are also people who are concerned about privacy. After uploading the chat history to the cloud, how to ensure the user's data privacy and security and service quality is the key. Will there be privacy leakage?
According to reports, WeChat has not launched the chat history cloud storage function before, because of privacy considerations.
People familiar with the matter said that the project is still being promoted, and the specific details have not been finalized.
This service puts forward higher requirements on the security technical capabilities of the Tencent team.
The cloud storage market is getting hotter
How many people are willing to pay for it
In the final analysis, the "WeChat Cloud Storage" service is that WeChat officially provides a cloud server for users to upload and save previous WeChat chat records (including text, pictures, videos, voices, etc.).
Simply put, it is the same as saving photos, videos, etc. in your phone to cloud disks such as Baidu Cloud and iCloud.
It's just that this time the cloud server provider became WeChat official, and the storage object was chat records.
In recent years, competition in the personal cloud storage market has become increasingly fierce. In addition to mainstream Apple iCloud, Baidu Netdisk, QQ Netdisk, etc., Ali and Huawei have also joined the track.
How to seek commercial realization on this track and how to ensure data security are the core issues.
In the entire online disk industry, membership fees are the most important source of income.
However, how many people are willing to pay for online disks has been plagued by online disk providers.
According to data from iiMedia Consulting, as of July 2020, among the distribution of monthly active users of domestic cloud disk storage apps, the number of monthly active users of Baidu Netdisk is as high as 39.832 million.
Earlier, Alibaba Cloud Disk, which faced individual users, entered the game, but its profitability remains to be tested.
According to Tencent's 2021 second-quarter financial report, as of the end of June, monthly active accounts of WeChat and WeChat had reached 1.251 billion, a year-on-year increase of 3.8% and a month-on-month increase of 0.8%. The growth rate of WeChat users was weak.
However, it is worth mentioning that the number of registered paid members increased from 203.4 million in the same period last year to 229 million in the middle of this year, a growth rate of 12.8%, and there is still a lot of room for growth in the future.
Some analysts believe that if the new business is launched, it will help "open source" and increase business revenue, while also helping to improve user experience and maintain active viscosity.
On Monday and Tuesday, Tencent’s stock price rose 3.48% and 2.08% respectively, closing at HK$515.5, with a market value of HK$4.95 trillion.