As WeChat turns 10 and the development team come up with a new video feature, new users keep arriving every day.
By XU Shiqi
When ZHANG Xiaolong, a mild-mannered software developer at Tencent, came up with a simple messaging tool, no one expect his minimalist creation to become the super app it is today. WeChat is now a one-stop-shop for social media, banking, shopping and much more. Every day, more than a billion people log into WeChat, make 330 million calls, post 670 million photos and over 100 million videos, and exchanging uncountable billions of messages. Over 400 million make use of third-party “mini apps” to hail taxis, order food, book doctor’s appointments, or pay their bills.
WeChat, as Zhang said at the app's tenth birthday party, has become a necessity and a lifestyle. For many, WeChat is the internet.
Despite some obvious real-world events, 2020 turned out to be a great year for WeChat with quick product iterations and remarkable growth. Total transactions on mini programs more than doubled, with each user spending two thirds more, to reach an estimated 1.6 trillion yuan ($250 billion). While players such as JD.com and Pinduoduo contributed the lion’s share, the platform also saw a 68 percent increase in the number of mini programs with active transactions, predominantly in travel, education, and public services.
New features in WeChat’s mobile payment function, WeChat Pay are behind most of that growth. One recent feature is a credit scoring system (WeChat Pay Score), based on past spending history, which allows those with high enough scores to use selected services deposit-free. Over 240 million users have signed up, performing tens of millions of transactions every day.
On the business-facing side, WeChat for Business, a workplace collaboration tool, has 5.5 million corporate customers with 130 million DAU. A 1.2-billion-yuan program gives digitization grants to small businesses, government entities and educators.
Revenue from in-app gaming also grew by 20 percent, reaching a new high in December, in line with the increase in traffic. The number of monthly gamers topped 500 million for the first time, with each spending 50 percent more time than in 2019.
Plans are afoot for better search functions, including multimedia searches, new algorithms for result ranking, and inclusion of content outside the WeChat ecosystem.
Dazzling as all this may sound, on the front burner is “Channels,” WeChat’s own in-app video feature. Vloggers will soon be able to direct viewers from Channels to their stores to make purchases via WeChat Pay. Gamers will be able to go live. Launched in January 2020, Channels has already gone through four major overhauls and is still seen as a work in progress. But hopes, and enthusiasm, are high.
Shelved some years ago as being technically too difficult, after the growth of video content across the internet, including video posts on “Moments,” WeChat’s existing social media, Channels has been brought it back as a stand-alone feature.
The early months were not without challenges, the biggest being content. With little high-quality content, viewership was low, which in turn discouraged content creators and viewers. A breakthrough was made by introducing bookmarks for videos friends liked, engagement gradually improved.
Zhang reckons that Channels needs a big library of content, with each genre and style spreading in different ways — long and serious videos discovered through friends; short, goofy, and light-hearted ones recommended by algorithms. Enough good content would make browsing easier and more enjoyable.
Another front is live streaming. Channel’s live-streaming function is still basic, but as a “more authentic, more down-to-earth, easier to create” form of media, live streaming will “dominate information dissemination in the future,” said Zhang said in his speech. This year, Channels will improve its live streaming, which in turn will be linked to e-commerce mini programs. Soon, users may also notice live broadcasts pop up in gaming, search results, or WeChat’s bread-and-butter instant messaging windows.
Zhang spoke of “bold experiments” to come with the user interface, music, a proprietary keyboard, and a new style of emojis and memes.
Given the success of the app, the WeChat Model has become the stuff of legend. New features, including Channels, go through very quick iterations in their early days. But once stabilized, there is no rush to expand or monetize its popularity. Teams seem disproportionately small given the scope of the businesses they cover — WeChat Pay only has one or two operation managers in charge of each industry, despite the hundreds of millions that change hands every day. Even Channels, in which the company has poured tremendous amounts of resources, employs only a hundred people, including developers and marketing managers. “Creativity is the key, not size,” Zhang said.
Zhang puts WeChat’s success down to connectivity and simplicity: “connecting people with other people, through content, and through services.” The challenge, however, is to keep it minimalist, elegant, and easy to use as it becomes ever more encompassing. Having seen countless other platforms become “bloated, cumbersome, and nonviable,” Zhang said his goal is to not fall victim to data and algorithms but to focus on product and creativity, and keep this billion-user app “simple and small.”
