Facebook Shift Nods to Chinese Super-app WeChat
March 08 2019 - 1:42AM
Dow Jones News
By WSJ City
Facebook's latest shift toward private messaging, payments and
e-commerce echoes the footsteps of WeChat, China's social
networking super app that many Chinese find indispensable.
KEY FACTS
-- Facebook plans to offer encrypted messaging across all of its major
products.
-- It will allow people to make private conversations ephemeral.
-- Developed by Tencent, WeChat has evolved from a simple messaging service.
-- Users can shop, pay, buy movie tickets and make doctor's appointments
without leaving the platform.
-- WeChat counts over one billion users.
WHY THIS MATTERS
The path to a super-app wouldn't be as smooth for Facebook as it
was for WeChat, which was sheltered from competition in a market
hungry for its services, and doesn't provide the level of privacy
that many users of a Facebook app would likely demand.
But for wired Chinese--and tech-sector analysts--the reason for
Facebook's shift is easy to understand. Facebook is "very aware of
how Tencent has been able to integrate messaging and payment and
e-commerce and all of these mini-apps into one platform," said Ben
Cavender, a senior analyst at China Market Research Group.
A fuller story is available on WSJ.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 08, 2019 01:27 ET (06:27 GMT)
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