Messaging is popular everywhere, but the big brands outside of China are all engaged in a furious game of imitation, trying to catch up to WeChat’s capabilities. It has become their most powerful resource and, for many, their greatest dependency. The super app’s all-in-one functionality means users seldom need-and perhaps seldom want-to exit the platform. This technology’s entrenchment in Chinese society is so broad, so deep, and so complete that it’s difficult for non-users to even imagine. In China, “if you’re not on WeChat, you’re cut off,” says Maria Repnikova, an expert on Chinese communications at Georgia State University. By the end of 2016, more than 30 percent of users were spending at least four hours a day on WeChat, twice the proportion of a year earlier. But it’s not too much to say some users live there. The average user spends 66 minutes, or about a third of their daily mobile time, on WeChat, Tencent estimates. It’s a super app.” (Of course, he told me all this via WeChat’s voice call feature.)
It’s like combining Facebook and WhatsApp and Twitter and Snapchat and YouTube all together. “You can do almost anything you want on it,” says Yi, 33, who was born in Beijing, grew up in the United States, and has lived in Shanghai since 2010. He hails taxis, handles utility bills, books flights, splits checks with friends, sends gifts, tracks fitness, and donates to charity-all with WeChat. Before bed, he browses WeChat’s “mini-programs,” or apps that live inside the app.
Vchat messenger movie#
After work, Kraft Heinz’s general manager for e-commerce in China turns to the platform to buy movie tickets or make restaurant reservations. By the end of 2017, it is expected to be used by more than 79 percent of China’s smartphone users, according to eMarketer.Īt lunchtime, Yi uses WeChat to order and pay for food deliveries. WeChat has a powerful role in the Chinese economy. While it started primarily as a tool to communicate, it is now defining what’s possible anywhere with messaging and with mobile phones. Owned by Shenzhen-based net giant Tencent, in Chinese the service is called Weixin, or micro letter. Yi is one of nearly 1 billion mostly rabid WeChat users, half of them in China. Later, at the Shanghai office where he commands a staff of 50 for Kraft Heinz, he interacts with team members using WeChat group chats for various company functions-including strategic planning, marketing, and operations. He answers urgent messages, comments on people’s “moments,” and shares his own. The first thing David Yi does every morning when he wakes up is check WeChat.
0 kommentar(er)
