Overview
- Tencent disclosed Tuesday it had halted a small iOS test that showed a browse count and tappable avatar bubbles for Status, and it confirmed there is no visitor list.
- PR chief Zhang Jun said read receipts and visitor tracking are “welded shut,” meaning the company will not build or offer these features.
- A WeChat employee explained the experiment aimed to boost interaction by showing totals and letting users tap bubbles to view friends’ Status posts, not to let people see who viewed theirs.
- Customer-service replies shifted over the day and added confusion, with messages variously describing the feature as not launched, paused, or still in testing without detailed visitor information.
- Screenshots from an iOS gray test shared on Weibo spread fast and stoked privacy worries in a service with more than 1.4 billion users, where the norm is no read receipts or visitor tracking.