How WeChat Dominated a Country
Today, chat apps are as numerous as the grass in your backyard. The most popular one worldwide at 1.5 billion users is WhatsApp. Second to it at 1.3 billion users and most popular in the US and Canada is Facebook’s own Messenger. Coming in at third with over 1 billion users is the one I’m here to talk about: Tencent’s WeChat (known locally as Weixin). On the surface, WeChat has all the trappings of any modern messaging app: group chatting, photo sharing and voice and video call. But to categorize WeChat as simply an app for messaging would be severely underselling its true capability and its influence in the country. In other countries where inhabitants juggle multiple chat platforms for messaging, WeChat is the undisputed leader in China, and for good reason.
Ubiquity
WhatsApp and Messenger surpass Tencent’s WeChat in terms of total users worldwide, but not by much. More, the popular app’s market penetration is 79% in China alone. Think about that for a second. In a country of 1.38 billion (2017), anyone you come across likely uses the app. Breaking it down to my own micro-world when I was an expat in Beijing, there wasn’t a single soul that I didn’t communicate with via WeChat. That includes friends, colleagues, and even certain merchants. Simply put, it’s an app for friends, work, and general information. Sure, competitor chat apps may be blocked behind the Great Fire Wall, leaving some folks grumbling for more choices. But there was a subtle convenience I enjoyed not needing to figure out the best way to communicate with a friend. I didn’t need to wonder whether they prefer SMS, WhatsApp, Messenger or e-mail (ugh!). Communication was as simple as “WeChatting” someone to start a conversation. In fact, if you’re in China and you’re not using WeChat, you’ll often find yourself left out of activities and events organized by friends.
Business Marketing
It’s not just your average citizen using WeChat either. Local businesses use the app as a space to engage with their customers in the form of official accounts. Through official accounts, businesses can provide services to subscribers, such as sharing the latest promotion or answering queries in real-time. Official accounts span across businesses, interests and hobbies, news, brands, and personal services to name a few. But beyond those, established and aspiring KOLs leverage official accounts to build their brand, pushing comprehensive content like news and articles to their devoted followers. Rather than being redirected to an external page, content is directly consumable through WeChat. Followers can then engage with likes and comments. It’s not uncommon for KOLs to even respond back to your comments, making more personal engagement experiences between both parties.
Social Presence
Whereas other apps are designed purely for communication, WeChat is also the de facto social networking service. Because popular foreign social platforms like Facebook and Instagram became blocked in China, Tencent saw this as an opportunity to build their own into its wildly popular messaging app, giving rise to Moments. The premise of Moments is pretty simple: post pictures, micro-videos, status updates or articles in your feed and receive “likes” and comments from contacts you’re connected with. It’s much less robust compared with Facebook, but Moments was wildly adopted by users upon launch, with a 93% penetration rate in the mainland and a reported 750 million daily users. It’s not uncommon to find yourself simply scrolling through your Moments feed during downtime or sparking a conversation off of a friend’s post. Because of all the eyeballs glued to Moments, registering about 10 billion hits in a 24-hour span, the social networking platform has become a crucial promotion tool for companies trying to build their brand in China, which ultimately contributes to WeChat’s revenue stream from ads (17%).
Mobile Payments
But WeChat’s ultimate ace up its sleeve is that the app is also your digital wallet thanks to WeChat Pay. To illustrate, it’s whatever your favorite chat app is + a social payment app like Venmo + merchant payment tool like Apple Pay. In 2014, Tencent introduced WeChat Pay in the form of “red envelopes” to be given during the annual Chinese New Year celebration. Not only was this a fun new way to encourage the cultural practice of gifting red envelopes to friends and family, but it helped demonstrate the value and convenience of peer-to-peer mobile transactions and spur mass adoption amongst WeChat’s growing user base. Pretty soon, WeChat Pay became the easiest way to split a bill among friends. Not long after, China’s merchants adopted WeChat Pay as an acceptable way to pay for goods and services. This includes dining, transport, utilities, retail and just about anything relevant in your daily life.
With the ability to pay back friends and make purchases, WeChat Pay effectively eliminated the need to carry a wallet around. Alibaba’s equally omnipresent Alipay also features a digital payment function, but WeChat’s social clout gives its payment feature a clear advantage in the P2P space. What makes WeChat Pay work so well is that WeChat was already used by virtually the entire population for chatting, making payment a natural extension of the chat app.
One App to Rule Them All
WeChat does have its share of flaws, however. It clearly gets an assist from the government for blocking foreign competition. For better or worse, WeChat is a one-stop communication tool for friends and work, spurring some to create a separate account to engage with colleagues. The societal benefit of Moments is also rather debatable as fishing for “likes” to validate oneself is a real phenomenon. And features-wise, WeChat is not the most refined out of the competition (Tencent really should add a way to scrub through long voice messages). Yet despite all this, WeChat managed to ingrain itself into Chinese culture as a chat powerhouse that’s universally accepted by locals and foreigners alike. The features I described is just scratching the surface. Among others, WeChat has since seized lucrative opportunities by adding mini-games and integrating mini-programs (stripped down versions of 3rd party apps) to its arsenal of features. Add it all up and WeChat is much less a chat app than it is an everything app. If you move to China or you’re planning to do any kind of business in the country, it’s the very first app you should download. WeChat has a firm hold on the world’s most populous country, with no signs of loosening its grip.
