What started as a social media tool has morphed into a platform that can do virtually anything

Shayne Rochfort is an Australian who lives in Thailand, but the companion he relies on daily to survive socially and professionally is neither Australian nor Thai; it is Chinese - the phenomenally successful messaging app WeChat.

Rochfort, who has lived in the northern city of Chiang Mai for six years, started using the app in 2013 and says he has more than 2,000 contacts listed on it.

Women check their messages on WeChat in Dongguan, Guangdong province. Users can book taxis, buy bonds, shop, order food and almost anything else and pay for all these things by linking the WeChat account to a bank account. Liu Mei / For China Daily

He is one of 650 million monthly active WeChat users worldwide, who have seen the transformation of what started as little more than a handy piece of software to help friends stay in touch into an indispensable tool now used to do all manner of commercial transactions and that has joined the arsenal of weapons that companies deploy to help their businesses grow.

Rochfort says WeChat has been invaluable in promoting his travel book, China to Chiang Mai, which will go on sale in China soon.

"I often use the 'People Nearby' function (of WeChat) to meet travelers in Chiang Mai," he says. "When they add me (to their list of contacts) I usually send out the food section of my book and a one-day trip planner so people know how to get around Chiang Mai."

When he first put a web link to his book on a section of WeChat called Moments, about 200 people visited the website almost immediately, he says.

WeChat also allows users to chat either by audio or video, and Rochfort says he has found the app's ability to translate text into other languages, including Thai, a great help and a valuable learning aid.

With WeChat, which was launched in 2011, users - as long as they have an Internet connection - can display pictures, video and written material that they think contacts may find interesting.

They can book taxis, buy bonds, shop, order food and almost anything else and pay for all these things by linking the WeChat account to a bank account. Accounts can be set up by individuals or corporate entities.

The first research report about WeChat, released by owner Tencent late last year, showed that Internet usage over WeChat generated 95.2 billion yuan ($14.6 billion; 13.2 billion euros) in revenue; and 11 billion yuan worth of daily consumption items were bought.

The newspaper USA Today said recently that WhatsApp, a popular communication app in the West, now has 900 million monthly active users; Twitter has a little more than 300 million; and Instagram, the photo and video-sharing app that Facebook owns, also has about 300 million.

Mobile Messaging Apps: Global User Forecast, a report by eMarketer, a digital industry research firm, says more than 1.4 billion consumers worldwide were expected to use a mobile messaging app last year, and it forecasts the number will grow to 2 billion by 2018.

A recent Forbes article expects average monthly users on WhatsApp to increase to nearly 1.3 billion by the end of 2020. It also forecasts WhatsApp's average revenue per user will be around $4 by 2020, which could yield revenues of around $5 billion.

WeChat has a far wider range of functions than an instant-messaging app, and it differs from Twitter and Facebook, where content can be made available to very large audiences, in that communications are usually restricted to individuals who know one another. Exceptions to this are its People Nearby and Shake functions, which allow users to make contact with strangers.

Charles-Edouard Bouee, global CEO of the consulting firm Roland Berger, says WeChat brings together the features found in other apps.

"WeChat is like WhatsApp, Skype, Instagram and Facebook all in one, with an included payment option and a service that allows for real-time localization and finding friends nearby. In my view, the developers of WeChat have managed to combine the strengths and services of various different apps all in one. This is what I call 'flat to fast' a flat recombination of existing techniques into a very powerful tool."

Kirk Wilson, executive director of the China-British Business Council (China), says almost all British government departments and companies have WeChat official accounts, and almost all senior executives of British companies in China have personal WeChat accounts. The council has more than 900 member companies in China, of which about 70 percent are British and 20 percent are Chinese.

"WeChat is very good for the final consumers in terms of convenience. It is very convenient that you can do all the applications with the wallet, all kinds of things."

Stefan Sack, founder and CEO of HK-based SinEuSyn consulting company, says: "WeChat is so present in Chinese consumers' hands that it is impossible not to use it, as a company.

"Even in business-to-business, the notification of events, products, fairs, etc, is something everyone needs to do now."

He often uses the WeChat Moments service to let others know about work events and social happenings, and to encourage exchanges, he says. However, WeChat's ease of use does have at least one downside, and that is that staff are prone to unwittingly pass on company information that is commercially sensitive, and they need be educated in this regard, he says. Ease of use also means that sometimes the quality of information disseminated is not of the standard that it ideally should be, he says.

Tommy Tang, a project manager with Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, says the app offers various kinds of commercial functions for companies, such as opening WeChat shops. The forwarding of products or information on WeChat Moments can be highly influential with mouth-to-mouth promotion, he says.

The one-time release of an advertisement in the WeChat Moments section can cost millions of yuan. A company in Shanghai has built a third-party platform named Weimob that offers marketing and promotional services to companies on WeChat.

"WeChat's commercialization forms are quite different to those of others and are very flexible for companies," Tang says. "They can do things that are very simple and things that are very complex. The use of WeChat for promotions is a must for companies. It is the most active social media platform in China, and companies can tailor advertising and promotional campaigns on WeChat in accordance with their strengths and needs."

Lyu Ronghui, a researcher with iResearch Consulting Group, says WeChat is one of the most important promotional platforms for companies that want to advertise and to engage in brand building. It is not just a matter of promoting its brands, but more importantly of reaching individuals so that they form positive relationships with brands, and in turn influence buying decisions.

But WeChat is still limited in the way it carries advertisements and promotional activities, she says.

"Companies are certainly keen to promote their goods and services through WeChat a lot more, but that would have an impact on the WeChat user experience, and there is a reluctance by WeChat's owners to allow that to happen. But they do want to find ways to help companies build promotional channels."

The emergence of WeChat has come on the back of the growth of the mobile Internet.

"This has also resulted in changes in the way people socialize and in the way companies promote their products and services. As the mobile Internet has made handheld devices one of the chief tools that people use in dealing with others, including businesses, individuals have begun to demand changes that make the app faster and more fun, and companies have begun to demand closer relationships with consumers and greater efficiency."

Ren Chao, a researcher with the Internet consultancy Analysys International in Beijing, says the important thing for big Internet companies is building an ecosystem, and WeChat is building that based on the mobile Internet. WeChat is likely to be replaced only when handheld devices are supplanted by other kinds of electronic terminals such as glasses and watches, and even unmanned aerial vehicle, he says.

WeChat, like Facebook, needs to pay a lot of attention to the user experience, he says, and as long as it innovates it will continue to be popular.

WeChat's overseas market has expanded greatly since 2011, and it now has more than 200 million users outside China. Nevertheless, China remains by far and away the app's most important sphere of activity.

In Africa, Tencent has teamed up with Naspers, the continent's largest media company, to introduce WeChat, and it is estimated to have about 6 million registered users in South Africa already, the Financial Times reported recently.

WeChat is also widely used by university students learning Chinese and business people developing ties with their Chinese partners.

For Albadawe Abdalla, dean of the Chinese department at the University of Khartoum in Sudan, WeChat has almost become a must in his daily work and life. Like many companies or organizations in China, Albadawe helped set up a discussion group on WeChat, and invited all teachers in his department and some Sudanese students to join.

"Whenever we need to make an announcement, we just deliver it through WeChat, and whenever we are planning an event, we, again, discuss it on WeChat," says the 34-year-old.

Albadawe cited a recent example of how WeChat helped him spread news.

"We just made an announcement about registration for the upcoming Chinese Bridge competition," says Albadawe, referring to the annual Chinese proficiency contest for non-native Chinese speakers.

"I am pretty sure this announcement can well find those who would like to participate in the contest," he says.

The professor keeps all China-related contacts on his WeChat account, saying that he gets a response almost immediately after sending a message to his Chinese friends.

The dean also encourages his Sudanese students to use WeChat for typing Chinese characters, downloading reading material and communicating with Chinese friends and teachers.

Mohamed Abdel Fatah Al Tahir, a fourth-year student in Albadawe's department, goes beyond improving his Chinese.

"WeChat allows me to keep in close touch with my Chinese business partners. With suppliers sending photos and the app's convenient payment options, business can be initiated and completed through WeChat," says Tahir, who frequently visits Yiwu in Zhejiang province - a center for small commodities - and is aiming to become a businessman after graduation.

The eMarketer report says WeChat ranked among the top three messaging apps last year in the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Malaysia. WeChat tends to be popular in countries with a sizeable Chinese population but has gone mainstream only in a handful of markets outside China, the report says. WhatsApp was listed among the top three messaging apps in 34 countries, and it ranked No 1 in 26 countries.

The report says that a popular chat app in one country may not even be on the radar in another. The qualities that make a chat app popular in a location - cultural nuances, country-specific features and app capabilities and word-of-mouth marketing - do not always translate to the global stage, which has made it difficult for some apps to expand beyond their home country or region.

"WeChat hasn't done much good strategic marketing overseas yet, but its strength is about making good products, so it will make a series of efforts to expand the market," Ren says.

Kirk at the China-British Business Council says WeChat is like 10 companies together, which can be a good thing and a bad thing. In developing countries, many companies may be able to work with WeChat, but in developed countries, people would probably prefer to have individual apps for different functions, rather than one comprehensive platform.

"The good thing about WeChat is that you have everything on one platform, but it could also be a bad thing for Tencent to go abroad. I think they will struggle in Europe and the US, because people like their individual apps and have a lot of choices. So they need to work out a way to be much more flexible and let other companies participate in the ecosystem. But there are similar markets in which people would like it very much, such as India and Mexico.

"WeChat has been mostly developed based on Chinese users' habits, and if they want to expand overseas, it has to be tailor-made for overseas users. But for companies or brands that want to come to China, they need this platform."

Contact the writers at chenyingqun@chinadaily.com.cn and suqiang@chinadaily.com.cn

The emergence of WeChat has come on the back of growth of the mobile Internet. Provided to China Daily

(China Daily European Weekly 03/18/2016 page1)