WeChat (Chinese: ?? ; pinyin: Ã, W? ixÃÆ'¬n ; literally: "micro messages") are multi-purpose messages, social media, and payments a Chinese mobile application developed by Tencent. It was first released in 2011, and by 2018 it is one of the largest standalone mobile apps in the world by monthly active users, with over 1 billion monthly active users (902 million active users every day). It has been called "app for all" Chinese and "super apps" because of its various functions and platforms. Besides China, it's also the most popular messaging app in Bhutan.
At the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway 2018 shareholders, Charlie Munger identifies WeChat as one of the few potentials, despite the current small competitor, for Visa, MasterCard, and American Express.
Video WeChat
Histori
WeChat started as a project at Tencent Guangzhou Research and Project center in October 2010. The original version of this application was made by Zhang Xiaolong and was named "Weixin" by Ma Huateng, CEO of Tencent and launched in 2011. The Government has actively supported the development of e- commerce in China - for example in the plan of the fifth year (2011-2015).
In 2012, when the number of users reaches 100 million, Weixin re-branded "WeChat" for the international market.
WeChat has more than 889 million monthly active users by 2016, 90 percent of whom are in China. By comparison, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp (two other more well-known international competitive messaging services in the West) have about one billion Monthly Active Users by 2016 but do not offer most of the other services available at WeChat. For example, in Q2 2017 WeChat's revenue from social media advertising was about US $ 0.9 billion (6 billion Yuan) compared to Facebook's total revenue of US $ 9.3 billion, 98 percent of which came from social media advertising. WeChat's revenue from value added services is US $ 5.5 billion.
Maps WeChat
Features
Messaging
WeChat provides text messaging, voicemail messages, broadcast (one-to-many) messages, video and conference calls, video games, photo and video sharing, and location sharing. It can exchange contacts with nearby people via Bluetooth, as well as provide various features to contact people at random if desired (if people are open to it). It can also integrate with other social networking services like Facebook and Tencent QQ. The photos can also be decorated with filters and captions, and an automatic translation service is available.
WeChat supports various instant messaging methods, including text messaging, voicemail, walkie talkies, and stickers. Users can send previously saved or live images or videos, other usernames, coupons, lucky money packages, or current GPS locations with individual friends or in group chats. WeChat character stickers, such as Tuzki, resemble and compete with LINE stickers, Japanese messaging apps.
Official account
WeChat users can register as official accounts, allowing them to drive feeds to customers, interact with customers and provide them with services. There are three types of official accounts: service accounts, subscription accounts, and corporate accounts. Once the user as an individual or organization sets the account type, they can not change it to another type. By the end of 2014, WeChat's official account count has reached 8 million. The official account of the organization can be applied for verification (cost 300 RMB or about US $ 90). Official accounts can be used as platforms for services such as pre-hospital enrollment, visa extension, or credit card services.
Subscription account
WeChat's subscription accounts are the basic account type, allowing push content and notification updates for subscribers to show up in the subscription area. These accounts do not support the WeChat payment service.
Service account
Service account for business or organization to access more advanced features at WeChat. It offers more Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) than subscription accounts, and companies and organizations can create their own applications based on the WeChat API. Users can view information when viewing their messaging page. Account services support the WeChat payment service.
Moments
"Moment" is the WeChat brand name for social friends feed updates. Moments allow users to post pictures, post text, post comments, share music (related to QQ Music or other web-based music services), share articles and post "likes." Moments can also be linked to Facebook and Twitter accounts, and can automatically post Momen contents directly to these two platforms.
By 2017 WeChat has a maximum of two ads per day per Moments user.
Privacy at WeChat works with a group of friends - only friends of user contacts who can view their Content and comments on their Moments. User's friends will only be able to see likes and comments from other users only if they are in a group of friends together. For example, friends from high school can not see comments and likes from friends from the university. When users post their moments, they can separate their friends into groups, and they can decide whether this Moment is visible to certain groups of people. The posted content can be set to "Private", then only users can see it.
WeChat Pay for payment service
In China, users who have provided bank account information can use the app to pay bills, order goods and services, transfer money to other users, and pay in store if the store has a WeChat payment option. The third-party Vetted, known as the "official account", offers this service by developing a light "in-app app". Users can link their Chinese bank accounts, as well as Visa, MasterCard, and JCB.
WeChat Pay is a digital wallet service entered into WeChat, which allows users to make mobile payments and send money between contacts. Each WeChat user has their own WeChat Payment account. Users can earn balances by connecting their WeChat account to their debit card, or by receiving money from other users. Users who link their credit card can only make payments to vendors, and can not use this to increase the WeChat balance. WeChat Pay can be used for digital payments, as well as payments from participating vendors. As of March 2016, WeChat Pay has over 300 million users.
In 2014 for the Lunar New Year, WeChat introduces features to distribute virtual red envelopes, which are emulated after the Chinese tradition of exchanging money packages among friends and family members over the holidays. This feature allows users to send money to contacts and groups as gifts. When sent to a group, money is distributed evenly, or in random shares ("Lucky Money"). This feature was launched through promotion during the highly watched New Year's Eve of China Central Television, where viewers were instructed to shake their phones during broadcasts for the chance to win a sponsored cash prize from a red envelope. The red envelope feature significantly increases the WeChat Pay adoption. A month after its launch, WeChat Pay's user base expanded from 30 million to 100 million users, and 20 million red envelopes were distributed over the New Year holiday. By 2016, 3.2 billion red envelopes are sent during holiday periods, and 409,000 are sent out at midnight on Chinese New Year.
In 2016, WeChat initiates service charges if users transfer cash from their WeChat wallet to their debit card. On March 1st, WeChat payments stopped collecting fees for the transfer function. Starting from the same day, the fee will be charged for withdrawal. Each user has a withdrawal limit of 1,000 yuan (about US $ 150). A further withdrawal of more than 1,000 yuan is charged 0.1 percent with a minimum of 0.1 Yuan per withdrawal. Other payment functions include red envelopes and the transfer is still free.
WeChat Pay's main competitor in China and the market leader in online payments is Alibaba Group's Alipay. Alibaba company founder Jack Ma considers the red envelope feature as "Pearl Harbor moment", as it begins to erode Alipay's historic dominance in the online payment industry in China, especially in the transfer of peer-to-peer money. That success prompted Alibaba to launch its own virtual red envelope version in its competing Laiwang service. Other competitors, Baidu Wallet and Sina Weibo, also launched similar features.
In 2017 Tencent reported that WeChat has taken over Alibaba with 600 million active WeChat mobile phone payment users versus 450 million for Alibaba Alipay. But Alibaba has a 54 percent share of China's online mobile payment market in 2017 compared with 37 percent of WeChat shares.
City Service
In 2015 WeChat launches City Service features in 27 cities across China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. City Services include doctor appointments, paying for electricity or traffic fines, and booking transportation.
Heat Map
By 2015, WeChat offers a hot map feature that shows mass density. Quartz columnist Josh Horwitz accused the feature of being used by the Chinese government to track the assembly of irregular people to determine unauthorized associations.
Enterprise WeChat
For corporate, business and business communication purposes, WeChat's special version called WeChat Enterprise (or Qiye Weixin) was launched in 2016. This app is meant to help employees segregate work from personal life. In addition to the usual chat features, the program allows companies and their employees to track annual holidays and expenses that need to be replaced, employees may request a break or hour to indicate that they are working.
WeChat Mini Program
In 2017, WeChat launched a feature called "Mini Program". Business owners can create mini apps on WeChat systems, implemented using Javascript plus proprietary APIs. Users can install this inside the WeChat app. In January 2018, WeChat announced a record 580,000 mini-programs. With one Mini Progam, consumers can scan the Quick Response code using their phone at the supermarket counter and pay bills via WeChat's mobile wallet. WeChat Games has received great popularity, with the game "Jump Jump" attracting 400 million players in less than 3 days and reaching 100 million active users every day in just two weeks after its launch in January 2018.
Friends looking for
WeChat allows people to add friends with a variety of methods, including searching by user name or phone number, adding from phone or email contacts, playing a "bottle message" game, or seeing people nearby who also use the same service. By 2015 WeChat adds a "friend radar" function.
WeChat Index
In March 2017, Tencent released WeChat Index. By entering search terms on the WeChat Index page, users can check the popularity of this term in the last 7, 30, or 90 days. Data is taken from data in official WeChat accounts and metrics such as social sharing, likes and reading are used in the evaluation.
Feed and News Search
In May 2017 Tencent started a news feed and search function for its WeChat app. The Financial Times reported this was a "direct challenge to Chinese search engine Baidu".
WeChat Out
In January 2016, Tencent launched WeChat Out, a VOIP service that allows users to call mobile phones and landline phones worldwide. These features enable in-app credit purchases using a credit card. WeChat Out was initially only available in the United States, India, and Hong Kong, but further coverage was extended to Thailand, Macau, Laos and Italy.
Service under development in 2017
By 2017, WeChat is reportedly developing an augmented reality (AR) platform as part of its service offerings. His artificial intelligence team works on a 3D rendering engine to create a realistic, detailed view of objects in smartphone-based AR applications. They also develop mapping and mapping technologies simultaneously, which will help calculate the positions of virtual objects relative to their environment, allowing AR interactions without the need for markers, such as Quick Response codes or special images.
Digital marketing
Marketing history
WeChat advertising significantly influences Chinese society, and helps drive digital marketing strategies. Many campaigns have been launched to attract new users and retain existing ones since 2011. By 2015, one campaign reviews users' lives over the past year and timed to coincide with the fourth WeChat birthday. Users can track their history like first friends at WeChat or how many "Likes" they received that year. Campaigns create value with digital marketing, by connecting products and customers together. Users appreciate this campaign for witnessing their growth along with happiness and sadness. In other major campaigns in 2016, users can upload paid photos on "Moments" and only someone who is willing to pay can view photos and comment on them. The pictures were taken every night.
WeChat has been used by Chinese companies as part of a digital social media marketing strategy, to share information and improve their brand.
WeChat paid ads
Tencent tests paid ads in 2015, January. Companies are required to have a Chinese business license and a Chinese bank account to use advertising services.
Ad types in WeChat
- WeChat Ad Moments
- These are the ads displayed in User Moments. WeChat Ad Moments may include brand names, profiles, short descriptions, maximum 6 images (or short videos 6 to 15 seconds), and links to web pages hosted on the Tencent server. Ad moments like regular Moment posts but with sponsored tags. Users can interact with ads: they can like and comment on posts. The price of the WeChat Moment ad depends on where and when this ad will appear. Typically, the minimum budget for an ad is 50,000 RMB (about US $ 7,500).
Digital marketing in China
WeChat allows conversation trading in China, ie, e-commerce via chat/messaging, in addition to social media style posting capabilities, mini-web browsers and mini-programs that enable companies to offer complete ecommerce offerings in the WeChat app.
High service and low cost
Compared to Facebook and other social media, WeChat allows businesses to open accounts and gain followers on the platform for free. Businesses can send messages to followers and are often associated with them.
Large consumer base
WeChat has a large number and range of users of different ages. Businesses that advertise on WeChat have many potential customers.
Content marketing
Connecting with WeChat's large customer base can be a decisive factor for turning users from prospects into customers by leaving a lasting impression of the brand and by submitting content to educate users.
Key Opinion Leaders
Many Key Opinion Leaders (KOL, influential people and have built significant followers on social media) are active at WeChat. KOL has been very effective for promoting branding for Chinese companies that have recruited and developed relationships with KOL because the latter can help build and reputation electronics and share information about the product. For example, by 2016 L'Orà © à © al China is working with Papi Jiang - a popular KOL and blogger who has more than 10 million followers - to promote their products. More than a million people watched her first video promoting the L'Oreal MG beauty brand.
Hongbaos
This feature is based on Chinese tradition that provides red envelopes (usually cash) for special occasions and festivals. A number of Chinese companies use this feature to randomly select one or more followers to send bonuses through WeChat's lucky dip system. This amount will be deposited in the WeChat wallet of followers and can be transferred to the bank. This is used by companies as a gift to follow and share posts.
Micro Store
Companies with WeChat service accounts can open a micro store in the app. The basket can begin to develop these custom-made micro-shops, or they can host their own websites on the electronic platforms provided by WeChat. Users can view this micro store in WeChat and use the WeChat payment service to complete the payment within a few seconds.
Geo-localization marketing service
Geo-location service is one of WeChat's functions for digital marketing. WeChat will promote related ads based on location and user preferences. One of the most important areas in this case is retail, where consumers can get discounts of limited versions in retail stores in different regions. WeChat offers revolutionary 'bridges' to connect digital marketing and physical activity (such as retail, promotional selling).
QR code
QR code marketing has become widespread in China. Setting up the QR code on physical materials (such as posters) can increase traffic, and it can also be promoted across across various social media and forums. WeChat has used its power to develop a systematic marketing platform around the QR code. Users can scan QR codes to add each other as friends, or can be used to connect users to an official product team for a particular brand. The WeChat QR Code provides a way for offline physical products to link to the digital market. In China, digital marketing around the QR code is an environmental feature of several international cities, such as Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing.
Business WeChat
WeChat Business (Chinese name: ??) is one of the latest mobile social networking business models after e-commerce, which leverages business and friendship relationships to maintain customer relationships. Depending on instant messaging, free video calls, group chats, information sharing on WeChat Moments, and nearly 1 billion users, WeChat attracts many companies and entrepreneurs who sell their products at WeChat. Comparing with traditional E-businesses like JD.com and Alibaba, WeChat Business has many influences and advantages with fewer inputs and thresholds, which attracts many people to join the WeChat business.
WeChat Business marketing mode
B2C mode
This is the main profit mode of WeChat Business. The first is to launch ads and provide services through the WeChat Official Account, which is a B2C mode. This mode has been used by many hospitals, banks, fashion brands, internet companies and personal blogs because Official Accounts can access online payments, location sharing, voicemail, mini-games, and so on. It's like a 'mini App', so companies need to hire dedicated staff to manage accounts. Until 2015, there are over 100 million WeChat Official Accounts on this platform.
B2B mode
WeChat sellers in this fashion are for agents and promoting products by individuals, which are included in C2C mode. In this mode, individual sellers always post relevant photos and messages from their agent products in WeChat Moments or WeChat groups and sell products to their WeChat friends. In addition, they develop friendships with their customers by sending messages at festivals or writing comments under their updates at the WeChat moment to boost their confidence. Also, stay in touch with regular customers, improve 'WOF' (word of mouth) communication, which affects decision making. Some WeChat entrepreneurs already have an online store in Taobao, but use WeChat to retain existing customers.
Existing issues
The more people join in WeChat Business , this brings many problems. For example, some sellers start selling fake fake items such as bags, clothes, clothing, and watches. Some of them have special channels to get supply of high quality fake fancy products and sell them cheaply. In addition, some sellers even disguise themselves as international stewardesses or overseas students by posting fake-style photos at WeChat Moments. Then they claim that they can provide a purchase service abroad but sell fake fake goods at the same price as the original. Other hot products sold in WeChat are face masks, marketing modes like Amway, but most of them are unbranded products coming from illegal factories that produce excess hormones that will have a detrimental effect on customer health. However, it is difficult for customers to defend their rights because a large number of uncertified seller identities. In addition, the lack of WeChat's business oversight mechanism also provides an opportunity for criminals to continue this illegal behavior.
Security worries
WeChat operates from China under Chinese law, which includes strong censorship provisions and interception protocols. WeChat contains the ability to access text messages and contact books from its users and user locations via GPS features.
Countries and regions such as India, Australia, the United States, China and Taiwan, all fear that the application threatens national or regional security for various reasons. In June 2013, India's Bureau of Intelligence marked WeChat for security issues. India has debated whether they should ban WeChat for its possibilities in gathering too much information and personal data from its users. In Taiwan, legislators fear that the potential for exposure to personal communications poses a threat to regional security.
In 2016, Tencent was awarded a zero score of 100 in the report of Amnesty International ranking technology company about how they apply encryption to protect the human rights of their users. The report puts Tencent last of a total of 11 companies, including Facebook, Apple, and Google, due to the lack of privacy protection built into WeChat and QQ. The report found that Tencent does not use end-to-end encryption, which is a system that only allows users who communicate to read messages. He also found that Tencent did not recognize online threats to human rights, did not disclose government requests for data, and did not publish specific data on the use of encryption.
The update in September 2017 for this platform's privacy policy details that the log data collected by WeChat includes search terms, profiles visited, and content that has been viewed in the app. In addition, metadata related to communication between WeChat users - including call time, duration, and location information - was also collected. This information, used by Tencent for targeted advertising and marketing purposes, may be disclosed to Chinese government representatives:
- To comply with any applicable laws or regulations.
- To comply with court orders, subpoenas, or other legal proceedings.
- Respond to a request by a government authority, law enforcement agency, or similar body.
Privacy issues
Users in China have also expressed concern over the privacy issues of the application. Human rights activist Hu Jia was jailed for three years for incitement. He speculates that officials from the Internal Security Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security (known as guobao) listened to voicemail messages directed to his friends, repeating the words featured in voicemail messages to Hu Jia. The Chinese authorities further accused WeChat's application of threatening individual safety. China Central Television (short CCTV), a state-run broadcasting agency, displays a section where WeChat is described as an application that helps criminals because of its location reporting features. CCTV provides an example of such allegations by reporting the murder of a single woman who, after she tried to rob her, was killed by a man she met at WeChat. The location reporting feature, according to reports, is the reason the man knows where the victim is. The authorities in China have connected WeChat with a number of crimes. Hangzhou City, for example, reported more than twenty crimes related to WeChat in the span of three months.
Proponents of the application argue that WeChat is safe as a whole. Martin Johnson, the anti-censorship founder at China's GreatFire.org site, states that WeChat is less a potential threat than Weibo's application modeled on WeChat focus on messages between famous acquaintances and social groups. Doug Young, a Shanghai-based Party Line writer, notes that while applications may be practicing self-censorship in China, they will not practice the same self-censorship outside of China. Doing so, according to Young, will affect the image of the app and may hamper its global expansion.
malware XcodeGhost
In 2015, Apple published a list of 25 most popular applications most infected with XcodeGhost malware, confirming previous reports that version 6.2.5 WeChat for iOS has been infected. This malware comes from a fake version of Xcode (dubbed "XcodeGhost"), Apple's software development tool, and entered into applications that are compiled through a modified framework. Although Apple's review process, WeChat and other infected apps have been approved and distributed through the App Store. Although some sources claim that malware is capable of prompting users for their account credentials, opening URLs and reading the device clipboard, Apple responds that the malware is not capable of doing "something malicious" or transmitting personally identifiable information outside of "general system apps and information "and that no information states that this has happened. Some commentators regard this as the biggest security breach in App Store history.
Platform
WeChat mobile app works on Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and Symbian phones. Web-based OS X and Windows clients also exist. However this requires the user to install the application on supported phones for authentication, and no messaging roaming or 'Moments' are provided.
The company also provides WeChat for Web, a web-based client with messaging and file delivery capabilities. Other functions can not be used there, such as the detection of nearby people, or interacting with Moments or Official Accounts. To use a Web-based client, first need to scan the QR code using the phone application. This means it is not possible to log into the WeChat network if you do not have a smartphone that suits the installed application.
WeChat can be accessed on Windows using BlueStacks until December 2014. Starting later, WeChat blocks emulators and Android accounts that have been entered from the emulator may be frozen.
There are several issues reported with the Web client. Especially when using English, some users have experienced autocorrect, autocomplete, auto-capitalization, and auto-delete behavior when they type messages and even after messages are sent. For example, "will" autocorrected to "go", E is automatically removed in "need", "WeChat" is auto-capitalized to "Wechat" but not "WeChat", and after the message was sent, "don" t "gets auto correction to "do not". However, auto-corrected words after a message are sent appear in the phone app when the user types ("not" is visible in the phone app while "no" is visible in the Web client). Users can translate foreign languages ​​during the conversation and the words are posted in Moments.
Collaboration
In 2014 Burberry, partnering with WeChat to create our own WeChat app around autumn 2014, a runway show, giving users a live stream of events. Another brand, Michael Kors used WeChat to provide live updates of their runway performances, and then to run a photo contest "WeChat Chic Together Campaign". Some international brands use WeChat as a marketing tool in China but use other limited WeChat features such as customer service.
In 2014, British Airways decided to work with WeChat and use WeChat's potential in China's electronics market to develop plans to better connect with Chinese consumers. During the 2014 Spring Festival, the airline decided to attract more followers on WeChat's electronic platform by providing "rewards" to customers. They sent red envelopes directly to the home of the first followers in 2014. The envelope contained CEO greetings and $ 50 coupons. In addition, British Airways randomly selected 3 followers among these people to get round-trip flights between China and London. This marketing campaign finally managed to attract about 10,000 followers.
In 2015 WeChat collaborated with Cogobuy subsidiary IngDan Ltd for "WeChat Hardware Competition". Cogobuy and WeChat formed the "Internet of Things" (IoT) ecosystem partnership with more than one million followers in the same year. By forming a closed-loop ecosystem, Cogobuy serves every entrepreneur and innovator, even the entire IoT industry. IngDan Ltd provides consolidated support with supply chain services and resource connectivity to help hardware innovators to manufacture their products, as well as platforms to promote their products to WeChat followers through collaboration.
In 2015, WeChat partnered with eBay to jointly bring eBay inventory to the WeChat store for buyers in China using Yuan China. This is an extension of eBay's Customer-to-Customer marketing but the experience through the WeChat app uses Tenpay/Weixin Pay and inventory appears as a daily transaction.
In 2016 WeChat partnered with 60 Italian companies (WeChat has offices in Milan) who are able to sell their products and services in the Chinese market without having to get a license to operate the business in China. WeChat partnered with the Italian Digital Retex company to help companies set up their brands on the WeChat platform. In 2017, Andrea Ghizzoni, European director of Tencent, said that 95 percent of global luxury brands use WeChat.
In 2017 WeChat partnered with theAsianIR Singapore marketing agency to sell their platform features to the international market. WeChat and theAsianIR help companies build their brands on the WeChat platform using the viral word-of-mouth marketing system, which recruits influencers and agents at no cost to the company.
Sensor
Global sensor
Beginning in 2013, reports emerged that Chinese search even outside of China was being filtered out keywords and then blocked. This happens both on incoming traffic to China from abroad but also exclusively between foreign parties (the Service has censored its communications in China). In the international instance of blocking, the message is displayed on the user's screen: "Messages" ???? "Your message contains restricted words. Please check again." This is a simplified Chinese character for a Guangzhou-based paper called Southern Weekly (or, alternatively, South Weekend ). The next day Tencent released a statement addressing the issue that says "A small number of international users of WeChat can not send a specific message due to a technical error on this Thursday.An immediate action has been taken to fix it.We apologize for the inconvenience this user has caused us. will continue to improve product features and technology support to provide a better user experience. "WeChat plans to build two different platforms to avoid this problem in the future; one for mainland China and one for the whole world. The problem exists because the WeChat servers are all located in China and thus are subject to the censorship rules.
Two sensor systems
In 2016, Citizen Lab published a report saying that WeChat uses different censorship policies in mainland China and other areas. They found that:
- Keyword filtering is only enabled for users registered by phone numbers from mainland China;
- The user is not getting notifications again when the message is blocked;
- Filtering is more strict on group chats;
- Keywords are not static. Some newly censored keywords are found in response to current news events;
- The internal browser on WeChat blocks Chinese accounts from accessing websites such as gambling, Falun Gong, and important reports about China. International users are not blocked except accessing gambling and pornography websites.
Restrict sharing websites in "Moments"
By 2014, WeChat announces that under "related rules", the domain of the webpage that we would like to share in WeChat Moments must obtain an Internet Content Provider (ICP) license before December 31, 2014 to avoid restrictions by WeChat.
Iran
In September 2013 WeChat was blocked in Iran. Authorities refer to WeChat Nearby (Friend Radar) and the spread of pornographic content as the reason for censorship.
Committee to Determine the Criminal Content Example (a working group under the supervision of the attorney general) the FAQ website says:
Because WeChat collects mobile data and monitors member activity and since app developers are abroad and not working together, this software has been blocked, so you can use domestic apps for cheap voice calls, video calls and messaging.
On January 4, 2018, WeChat was released in Iran.
See also
- Instant messaging client comparisons
- Tencent Holdings
- Internet censorship in China
- Momo (software)
References
External links
- Official website
- WeChat, is a (in Chinese) way of living
- WeChat Pay
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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