The Social Networks We Truly Need

A look inside China's most popular apps, WeChat, Weibo, & Alibaba.

The list of apps I could not access during my time in China this summer with fellow WWU Business Students included Google, Facebook, Snapchat, Youtube, and many more. The Chinese Government had tight controls on the web use in their country which gave rise to mega-platforms outside of the US. I downloaded the popular Chinese app WeChat, a platform more powerful than I had originally imagined. I found out the first day of the program as I tried to buy prints at a museum and only found a barcode. That day, another student in the program paid for my prints and showed me what WeChat was truly capable of. WeChat had the ability for users to access a variety of services and products such as order food, order rides, send money, buy tickets, or check the news while also have video/voice calling features. This app is a one-stop-shop for everyone in China so as a tourist, you were out of luck as they need Chinese bank accounts to be set up.

WeChat is so versatile and utilizes QR codes in all areas as shown in the photo with the food vendor. This growth came from their connection with the QQ instant messenger and owner, Tencent. QQ was the only initial way to access WeChat, easily giving them millions of users. WeChat now dominates commerce across China with over 880 million monthly users. This is far beyond the number of users Apple and Samsung Pay have although Samsung has pushed efforts to bring awareness to the number of places they serve. The number of mobile payments occurring in the US is still far below what WeChat has created in China.

Weibo is a micro-blogging site that rose to the top of Chinese users with a more open and newsfeed based app. With over 460 million monthly users, brands play an active presence on these platforms as well. Weibo's basic features include personal accounts, sharing, commenting, as well as customized homepages, discover, and fitness tracking. Often compared to Twitter in its platform style, Weibo has over 130 million monthly active users. Just like WeChat and its payment system, Weibo is an integral part of society for those users.

What started as a way for Chinese exporters to sell internationally since its founding in 1999, Alibaba has expanded into a global powerhouse for online and mobile commerce. Their site states, "Alibaba's Group's Mission is to make it easy to do business anywhere." Being one of the largest online commerce companies out there, Alibaba has now grown to manage 3 main sites, Taobao, Tmall, and Alibaba.com. Taobao is home to over 7 million merchants and their biggest shopping site and is more C2C focused while Tmall is centered on B2C transactions.

Unlike American companies, WeChat has successfully become a standard for payments and networking at a mainstream level that Apple and Samsung Pay have yet to achieve. Theses firms had the opportunity to grow and focus on China and surrounding regions allowing them to grow horizontally by offering a multitude of services on one platform. With the announcement of tourist plans for WeChat Pay indicates that they are becoming more international. Americans can have some superiority complex when it comes to many things and tech is no exception but it has been time to pay attention to the ways people from different backgrounds operate in their society. Marketers can analyze these companies at great length, know more details about the integration of apps, as well as what worked and didn't. We have much to learn from these tech giants and their ability to dominate so many sectors of commerce. I personally, am excited at the chance to return to China to be able to use the WeChat payment system as it was so simple and fast.

To end today, I share a photo of the Chinese program's students, staff, and faculty featuring our own Marketing & Finance Chair, Dr. Love. A truly amazing and unforgettable experience in China!