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 04:28 ET (09:28 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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