GUEST POST-WeChat Story Part 4: Getting Into Business
The following is Part 4 in a multi-part series about the rise of WeChat, the popular mobile instant messaging service owned by Tencent.
By Lanie Nie
As China ended last year with an online population of 618 million and more and more people access the Internet over their smartphones, it has become evident that the Internet will play a growing role in the way Chinese people live and do business. Internet thinking has emerged as a concept that empowers newer start-ups to challenge older businesses not necessarily via cutting-edge technology, but more by rethinking the whole business in the context of a more connected world.
Many Chinese firms are thrilled by the widely-touted story of Xiaomi, the 4-year-old smartphone maker that calls itself an Internet company. Xiaomi is already outselling Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) in its home market using a web-only marketing strategy, redefined cost structure, fan-centric product philosophy and flat organizational composition. But Tencent (HKEx: 700), China’s undisputed Internet leader with a market cap that is challenging global online retailer Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), labels itself as an online company that partners with old industries, with service accounts hosted by WeChat as the magic tie in that relationship.
By encouraging airlines, banks, insurance companies, telecom carriers and many other businesses to take up residence on its platform, WeChat treats its service accounts as a resource for the entire business community to connect with smartphone users. WeChat has recently loosened its rules to allow business account holders to send 4 push-out mass messages for each follower per month, up from a previous 1 message. Meantime, voice accounts have become an important tool for companies as a brand builder and customer relations management kit than a megaphone to broadcast bargains and seduce followers.
With the gradual roll-out of a suite of software development tools, WeChat is helping the business community leverage its social platform and even build web apps with mobile-focused features such as image recognition and speech-to-text conversion. Tencent, using its open platform strategy, is also adding performance-based advertising and a built-in payment systems to work synergistically with WeChat, making it easier for business-owned service accounts to increase their visibility and ultimately garner more customers and revenue.
At Tencent’s partner conference last July, WeChat selected 9 service account operators as role models for existing and potential partners, highlighting functions like voice weather forecasts, automated parcel tracking, socialized shopping guides and location-based hotel finding. Although performance and reliability of some mobile-centric functions still have work to do, what really matters is that service accounts represent a gateway for traditional industries to adapt to the portable experience. That in turn enables them to connect with customers over the Internet at any time and from anywhere.
But the tie-up with offline businesses and the broader unconnected world has even greater upside for Tencent, since more services, stores and hardware controls that WeChat offers only serve to expand the platform. Growing usage of WeChat also offers an opportunity for Tencent to push its relatively new cloud services and online payment solution over more established rival products from competitors like Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) and Alibaba, giving it a window to improve these services as everyone vies for a piece of the mobile Internet.
Much the way that the recently-listed Weibo (Nasdaq: WB), China’s equivalent of Twitter (NYSE: TWTR), has transformed discourse in the world’s most populous country, WeChat, with all its streams and tributaries, is changing the dynamics of Chinese economic discovery. Using the platform as one of their new online foundations, business people from throughout China are now talking about user experience and brand building more than ever.
It wasn’t an explosion of science, but rather innovation sparked by a set of values that nurtured the kind of culture that has grown up gradually around WeChat, giving users options they have never had before. The service has empowered people in their jobs and in urban settings to pioneer new ideas, and makes convenience, efficiency, and democracy brought by the Internet available to the business community for interacting with its customers.
Lanie Nie is a writer, translator and participant observer of localization and internationalization efforts by Chinese technology, media and entertainment companies. She freelances regularly for Chinese business and technology news websites and can be emailed directly at lanienie@hotmail.com.
