Justin's Marketing Blog

By: Justin Spector

Weixin Changed How Users Engage with Social Media

Weixin is a Chinese social media app, like WhatsApp in the United States. The company was founded in 2011 and by 2014 had over 300 million active users throughout China, southeastern Asia, and America. Although social media had been around for over a decade at this point, Weixin took an innovative approach in creating an all-in-one platform which could be used to send photos to friends, read articles from news sources, and find the nearest restaurant. In the past, users would need to go to several different sites to do one unique task, but Weixin, which is very popular among urban youth culture, took the opportunity to create a platform which can do multiple tasks at a time on one convenient platform. The app also makes it easier for users to communicate through their phones with voice to text capabilities. For example, “Weixin allows its users to record messages by simply holding on one button and talking, which saves the trouble of typing Chinese characters on the phone.” (Mahoney & Tang, 2014)¹ Although today apps are taken for granted to possess these capabilities, Weixin was the original social media platform to include such features. Like Myspace, Facebook, YouTube before it, Weixin was a game changer in how audiences interact with social media and progressed the concept and convenience which was possible for users.

https://wechat.design/brand/

How Weixin Continued to Grow

Weixin continued to grow and become accepted by mainstream society by tapping into cultural norms which sparked interest in the platform. For example, Weixin took advantage of traditions from certain holidays and seasons to promote using the app. “In January 2014, just before the Chinese New Year, Weixin introduced a “Qiang Hongbao” campaign (i.e., Red Envelope campaign), which allowed its users to link their bank account to Weixin account, send or receive red envelopes virtually. Red Envelope is a traditional Chinese culture that includes a monetary gift that Chinese people give to family and friends during holidays.” (Mahoney & Tang, 2016)² Another option which was available was sending random Red Envelope gifts to users’ friends and family which would give different amounts of cash randomly to selected contacts. Also, in what appears to be an influence on the American company Uber, Weixin includes a feature called “Didi Taxi”, which works with over 350,000 taxi drivers in over 30 cities, and connects users to be able to book and make payment for their ride in one convenient platform, which has led to over half a million bookings a day. This feature does away with the need of the past in which people needed to hail a cab by waving, and it was much a game of luck in finding one.

Lessons We Learn from Weixin

Although 12 years has passed since Weixin was a groundbreaking company with an all-in-one platform, and many platforms now have introduced this same technology, we can learn a lot about using social media to break through into the culture by offering new features which will appeal to a large segment of the population. By going outside of the norms of the day, Weixin paved the way for platforms which were influenced by it to offer one platform with many features. In essence, today a user can shop, book a ride, engage with friends, and catch up on other media from one platform. This innovation has in many ways changed how the world views social media. The question then becomes; how do we move forward in innovative features from here? Who will be the next Weixin who will think outside the box and be a gamechanger in how users’ access and utilize social media?