![]() What’s next for the $10 billion startup? Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.SHANGHAI, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Tencent Holdings' (0700.HK) WeChat has resumed registrations of new users in mainland China, after suspending them last month to upgrade its security technology. ![]() Here’s what the future may hold -How a Chinese developer at Tencent is shaping the future of gaming -Gojek’s founder resigned to join the Indonesian government. turns its back on the EU, Georgia desperately wants in - A.I. The world’s biggest lighting company makes promises for a WiFi alternative-but 5G awaits -As U.K. But, Hu says, WeChat remains a central node for e-payments, ordering meals, calling cabs, and communicating with family, friends, and coworkers: “I would call it a national tool.” More must-read stories from Fortune: Hu, of Daxue Consulting, is more optimistic about Douyin’s “very promising” development. Shapiro says he thinks WeChat may “take a hit” in the next six months as users experiment more with Douyin and advertisers follow, but he estimates that Douyin’s growth will “start to tap out, from a user perspective, probably in the next 12 to 18 months.”Īs an anecdotal illustration of WeChat’s centrality to users in China, Shapiro says he rarely checks his email now because most Chinese clients contact him directly on WeChat, and he has worked in offices where coworkers communicate solely through the app, even when company policy suggests otherwise. “I still think the bulk of consumers, they’re very much convenience- and trust-oriented, and it’s hard to dislodge. “There’ll be some traction, but I don’t think it’s going to crush ,” Alexander Shapiro, Beijing-based head of strategy for the branding agency PBB Creative, says of Douyin’s efforts to branch into e-commerce and different social media formats. Tong says Douyin’s social features, like video messaging service Duoshan and the group chat service Feiliao, which both launched earlier this year, are still struggling to gain user interest. WeChat is already at “super-app” status Douyin has ambitions to create a similar in-app ecosystem of e-commerce and social networks, Tong says, “but these new verticals have yet to scale.” While Douyin is often painted as a younger disrupter that threatens WeChat’s hold on the market, it has struggled to construct a similar ecosystem of e-commerce and social networks. Since the mini-programs launched two years ago, Hu says, they’ve become one of WeChat’s “biggest functions,” with 746 million MAUs, or around two-thirds of all WeChat users. Many of these services are offered through mini-programs-essentially sub-apps within WeChat that don’t require users to leave the main app to download them, meaning they are effectively competing with Apple’s App Store or Android’s Google Play, and almost form a second operating system within a smartphone’s OS. Since its launch, WeChat has transformed itself from a social messaging app to a one-stop “super-app” that incorporates private messaging, social media, e-commerce, mobile payments, ride-hailing, food delivery, business-to-business transactions, and even games. The services offered also differ in scope. “WeChat is a tool, a daily tool for living Douyin is more content-driven, WeChat is not only about content.” Becoming a super-app “Douyin and WeChat are completely different apps,” says Yuwan Hu, chief operating officer at China market research firm Daxue Consulting. Much of Douyin’s threat to WeChat is based on WeChat’s slowing growth and its weakness among younger users. Predictions of Douyin’s victory are based on WeChat’s declining popularity among Generation Z users (anyone born after the late 1990s), who are said to prefer apps like Douyin for their video and live-streaming capabilities-and because their relatives can’t see their Douyin posts, unlike on WeChat.īut can Douyin truly be considered a generational replacement for China’s “super-app”? For many in the industry, Douyin’s role as a WeChat killer is, at least for now, greatly exaggerated. market dominance, Douyin is often named in China as the upstart that could knock off WeChat, the nine-year-old “super-app” owned by Tencent Holdings Limited. ![]() And just as TikTok has been framed as a threat to Facebook’s U.S. Owned by Beijing ByteDance Technology Co., the world’s second-most valuable unicorn, TikTok is a spinoff of Douyin, a Chinese short video app with around half a billion monthly active users (MAUs). Its speedy growth is also grabbing headlines in its native China, but for different reasons.
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