Mini programs: WeChat’s ‘app killer’

'search' will compete directly with Baidu and provide something new altogether. Tencent, Wechat’s parent company, also owns Sogou (a minor competitor to Baidu) this will at least lend this new venture some engineering expertise. Wechat is uniquely positioned to do what Google and Facebook so far hav...

Tencent launched an instant Messaging App, Weixin, from its Guangzhou research center in early 2011. the project took off quickly, with over 100 million registered users by 2012. the App soon started to encompass more features.

Wechat is a major player in the social space, so in that sense it is a bit like Facebook. This brings it into direct competition with Weibo in China. It contains instant Messaging, so it is like Whatsapp.

Essentially, WeChat can be used for just about anything you want to do online. Although it does not own all of the products that reside within its walls, it does facilitate easy integration between most of China’s most popular apps.

This bike-sharing program allows cyclists to pay for rides using their WeChat wallet. It is similar to bike-sharing schemes in cities worldwide aside from one difference: it does not require docking stations.

This mini app allows users to make small donations to charity for each 10,000 steps they take on a daily basis. For each 10,000 steps, a user can donate 1 Yuan, which is equivalent to roughly 15 cents.

60% of users open the App more than 10 times a day. 21% of users open Wechat more than 50 times per day. 17% of users spend 4 hours or more per day on Wechat.

Consumers are expected to use a much wider variety of mini Apps within Wechat in future. It is somewhat like Google’s accelerated mobile pages initiative, or Android instant Apps.

There are options to market brands on Wechat, either organically or via paid promotions. Paid promotion has only been available since 2015 and ads make up only 15–20% of Tencent’s revenues. By comparison, ads make up more than 70% of Facebook’s revenue. But that number is predicted to more than trip...

Most of those international accounts are held by Chinese people who have moved abroad. But Wechat has started to gain some ground in South America and Africa. There are now over 5 million Wechat users based in South Africa alone. It has been reported that foreigners based in China have become even m...

Wechat has built its success on integrating its way into its users’daily lives and integrating all of their most popular brands and services. By first building an engaged (in some cases, addicted) user base, it is now in a Supreme position to provide them with useful advertising.