WeChat and Weibo, the Real Peer-to-Peer Platforms
While Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter seem to be the dominant social media platforms in our lives, its not completely the same globally. WeChat, owned by Tencent, is China's go-to app for not only social media, but everything. It's almost a necessity to have a WeChat account in China to survive all the ins and outs.
What is WeChat?
With nearly 846 million users, WeChat is the ultimate platform to do anything. This goes from ordering food, paying bills, chatting with anyone and everyone, and sending money to friends. It started as a messaging app and transformed 700 QQ users (desktop IM service) into WeChat users. The easy integration of the app has allowed all its users to find friends with a simple QR code, and make payments with the touch of a button. An even more cool feature is that WeChat allows people to send each other money in the form of "red envelopes." This is traditionally a gift that is given during the holidays (such as Chinese New Year) or special occasions.
WeChat is also considered "apps within an app" that allows users to browse for mobile sites and other app developers to test on their platform. This gives them access to an already established user base instead of having to start from scratch with their own app.
In addition to WeChat and its multitude of services, China also has a very large social media platform called Weibo (Way-bo). Translated, this means "micro-blog" and its the Facebook and Twitter replacement, since either are blocked in China. At a time that other micro-blogging platforms were said to be causing social unrest, Weibo would be the one source of social media that would control incoming posts and block out certain information.
Weibo and It's Popularity
With Weibo, there is a 140 character limit to posts, and it has the follower-followee type system. It's usually referred to as China's Twitter, but has more features. Users on this platform tend to share more personal things than just political issues. As China is struggling to control and censor the internet, Weibo provides a space for people to express their feelings about the government and their roles as citizens. There are more than 500 million registered users with 313 million monthly active users. The platform is still growing and continuing conversation between many users. Some celebrities on Weibo are one of the biggest reasons for the ongoing popularity. Most of them were famous because they started on Weibo while the platform was first growing. As real life celebrities, they also are online influencers that talk about their work and inspire other users.
WeChat, Facebook, Weibo, Twitter...What's the Difference?
While a lot of these platforms seem really similar to Facebook and Twitter, there are a few things that set them apart. WeChat is in fact a platform that does much more than just social media. It operates like a huge app with multiple functions that can satisfy many needs. Without having to have multiple apps like Lyft, Uber Eats, Venmo, Cashapp, etc. WeChat can do all of that in one place. This is much more convenient, as it creates less of a hassle in navigating within so many platforms and accounts. Everything is consolidated into one, seamless, platform.
With Weibo, its hard to see where the differences are from Twitter. However, taking the culture of China into consideration, the platform offers itself as a place for citizens to feel like they can express themselves. Facebook and Twitter are not allowed in China, so this makes it difficult to connect with the many other users across the world. But Weibo makes it easy to keep in touch with people that are changing the norm, and stay connected.
Looking at how these platforms are structured can be a good example for a lot of the things we use. Finding ways to innovate in our day-to-day activities will help us all stay more connected, and create more efficient business methods.