Some other well-known platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn score below WeChat in terms of active users. The only other sites/apps above it are three Facebook platforms (Facebook, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger) and YouTube. That’s more than the population of Europe and Russia combined! When ranking the most popular social networking sites worldwide, WeChat ranks a commendable fifth. WeChat has over 1.2 billion monthly active users. WeChat Pay has registered 900+ million monthly active users.The majority of WeChat Mini Programs transactions are under 1000 RMB.WeChat users spend 82 minutes on the platform every day.WeChat users send 45 billion messages daily.23% of US internet users in the 18–24 age group use WeChat.WeChat has 1.48 million monthly active users in the US.78% of people in China aged 16-64 are using WeChat.WeChat has over 1.2 billion monthly active users.While WeChat statistics indicate the platform’s use outside China remains fairly low, and concerns related to censorship and privacy remain pertinent, its dominance in one of the largest markets in the world makes it an entity well-worth understanding. However, the platform has since gone on to introduce several more features that have made it an increasingly indispensable companion among its predominantly Chinese users. The app started out as a messaging and networking service like, say, Facebook, or WhatsApp. “If they banned it entirely, it will wipe out connections to my wife’s family, all our friends and my network of business contacts I built over 22 years,” he said.WeChat, or Weixin in China, is a social media app launched by Tencent in 2011. Kurt Braybrook, who lived in Shanghai for 22 years before moving back to the United States and Grand Rapids, Michigan, told the AP the app is irreplaceable for him and his China-born wife. It's how she talks to her mother and old friends from China, which she left in 2008, and how she communicates with her colleagues as a public relations manager for a Chinese-owned consulting company. "You don’t have to go outside of WeChat to enjoy all the services 10 other apps would give you."īeyond social networking, WeChat has largely replaced work emails, but it's also a platform for mobile payments, e-commerce, train bookings and blogs, as well as being host to a universe of other apps," notes Shen.įor Sha Zhu, who is Chinese and lives in Washington, WeChat "is the first thing I check in the morning,” she recently told the Associated Press. WeChat is Uber, Facebook, ApplePay, Snapchat, Amazon, Skype and Tinder in one app, notes Nellie Shen, of Oval Branding in a blog post. "This will be a stumbling block for anyone who does business with China or has family in China," he says. "I’ve traveled throughout Asia, and if you're there and don't use WeChat, you're viewed as the rarity."ĭitto for those of us here in the United States who communicate with and do business with China.įor Sohmer, he's already written to his client and asked if they could switch to another program for communication, like Skype. To Daniel Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities, that's the equivalent of the WeChat ban. Imagine if you shut down text messaging, video chat and mobile payments at once. (Savvy internet users get around the ban by using a VPN service.)īecause so many apps aren't allowed in China, WeChat has taken the mantle and bundled similar services all into one. In China, popular apps like Google, Twitter, Skype and Facebook have been banned by the government. He has recommended that people in the United States not use the app, because when you do, "you are actually helping the company improve its censorship and surveillance system to which mainland China’s users are subject." Banned apps in China "Users who register with a phone number outside mainland China are exempt from censorship." However, WeChat only targets those accounts with China telephone numbers, noted Ronald Deibert, the director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto in a recent Washington Post Op-Ed.
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