Before the heat surrounding its latest viral game Tiao Yi Tiao cools off, WeChat released Saturday an updated version of the game by integrating more social and interactive features.
Despite social components, including scoreboards and rankings, the original game was a standalone experience with no interaction with other players. The new version, however, allows two to ten players to compete directly.
After inviting WeChat friends, players take turns making their jumps. Failed jumpers only to get watch others play. The principle is the same, however, from the single player: the more successful hops you make, the higher your name will be on a leaderboard. In addition, more WeChat and Chinese-themed visual graphics ahave integrated.
Since its launch in late December last year, the download-free game has become an instant hit among Chinese users with a daily active user of 100 million. Given what the hongbao feature has achieved during previous Spring Festivals, WeChat has reasons to expect another spike of the game during the upcoming holiday.
In addition to the feature what could spice up our leisure lives, WeChat made an update that overjoyed millions of online marketers by allowing them to edit the typos in postings on WeChat official account, the default tool for making online marketing campaigns in China.
However, WeChat still won’t allow a free-for-all. Each post can be only edited once for up to five changes, be it Chinese characters, English words, figures, punctuation, or spaces. Edits in feature images and abstracts are still unavailable.
As for why only five changes are allowed, Tencent responded, “We want to make sure that the official account managers are really serious about each and every one of their postings. To be responsible for and provide the best reading experiences to their audiences. Less than five changes could guarantee a consistent reading before and after the edits. We will continue to improve and optimize based on user feedback.”
WeChat’s tightening regulation of contents spread to its official account management policy. In a statement made Saturday, the company downsized the numbers of official accounts each entity could register. Individuals can register up to two accounts, down from five, while organization users recorded a more drastic change from 50 to only five official accounts.
Although the platform does make exceptions for these limits, applicants have to go through a longer process to apply for the approvals from WeChat platform and then from relevant authorities.