WeChat Moved from Messenger App to Professional App

WeChat Moved from Messenger App to Professional App A messenger app that was designed for the users to send messages to their family ...

WeChat Moved from Messenger App to Professional App

A messenger app that was designed for the users to send messages to their family and friends has now become an essential communication medium among the professionals at their workplace. WeChat is the most popular messenger app among the Chinese people and it has eight hundred and eighty nine million active monthly users.

WeChat Moved from Messenger App to Professional App

Chinese messenger platform

WeChat is the most widely used instant messenger platform developed by Tencent the internet giant and was released in 2011. The messenger app is used to send instant messages, pay utility bills, for getting movie tickets and other services that makes it more convenient for the users with their day to day life. Apart from the personal lives of the user, the app has become a part of the professional lives with the additional number of work related features present in the app.

Furthermore, a survey was taken to analyse the use of the messenger app in discussing official matters and twenty thousand web users participated in the analyses and it was found that ninety percent of the users preferred WeChat to share about their professional life.  When people discuss about their official matters over the messenger platform, they tend to spend a lot of time in the app. This is an added advantage for the WeChat messenger app.

A Tencent research team, the Penguin Intelligence released the behaviour report of the web users and the result shows that 87.7% of the users use the platform to discuss about their work communication on a regular basis, while the other modes of communication like the text messages, phones and fax messages where used by 59.5% of the web users and mail was used only 22.6%. And also fifty seven percent of the contacts added newly are people who are related to work.

New trend in the professional life

The social media platform that was considered to be a part of the personal life is trending towards the professional life. Earlier, during the official meetings people exchange the business cards or name cards, but with the growing number of users in the messenger platform they have started to share their QR (quick response) codes that connect to the WeChat.

The app allows the users to share documents and files through the app and so the feature makes it easy for the professionals to share files and documents among themselves and discuss about the project within the app. Also, the conference call feature present in the messenger app can be made among the team members and they can share their views and ideas about an ongoing project. The users can make conference calls from anywhere at any time and they require only data connectivity.

A research analysis report stated that the thirty four percent of the users on an average spend 4 hours in the messenger app and it is more than the average result of past which was 16.3%. In 2016 the company reported that the users spend on an average one hour accessing the messenger app. As most of the Chinese users use the app, it is easily to reach the people and share things either personal or professional. Moreover a person’s complete social relationship is present on the messenger platform and it is inevitable to differentiate oneself from the platform.

Features of the Chinese app

WeChat is ruling the Chinese market when it comes to the instant messenger platform with 889 million users accessing the app. The app has a large user base because of the simple and user friendly features present in the app.

Instant messaging feature: The app was mainly designed to make communication easier among the users and so the app allows them to send instant messages, text messages, video messages, broadcast messages, share location, photos and videos, voice messages, and video conferencing. Also, the app allows the users to share the contacts using Bluetooth when they are present nearby and they can integrate with other social media networks like Tencent QQ and Facebook.

The users can upload photos from their gallery and add different features to it like, the captions, filters and automatic translation services. The app has a wide variety of stickers that are popular among the WeChat users. Rather than the regular text messages, the users can send videos, photos, share name cards, send lucky money packages and coupons with the others.

Accessibility to official account: People can register an official account that allows the users to push the feeds to the existing subscribers, interact with them and offer them with the respective services. The official account is of three types, they are enterprise account, subscription account and service account. When an organisation or an individual is registered with a particular account, they cannot move to another type of account and the app reached eight million official accounts by the end of 2014. This account can be used by the organisation or an individual as a platform for some of the services like credit card service, visa renewal and hospital pre-registration.

WeChat moments: Everybody is aware of the fact that the app enables the users to send messages, videos, images and other messages, one thing that may people are not aware about the platform is that it allows the users to share the music that are associated with any kind of music services like QQ music. And the users who like the moments shared by their friends and family can hit the like button that is present in the application. As WeChat’s motto is privacy, any photos or videos shared by the user can be seen only by the members present in the user’s contact list.  

Also, the users can link their WeChat moments with their social media account like the Twitter and Facebook account and the once linked, the contents are automatically posted on the platforms. The users can set the posts ‘private’ so that only the desired number of people can see the post, the user can however, the user can unset the post from ‘private’ any time.

Payment service: This is the most popular feature of the app from the messenger app that makes t convenient or the users to pay their bills, transfer money, and other goods and services. WeChat Pay is a digital payment service that is associated with the messenger app.

The app enables the users to link their debit card with their messenger account and also share money among other users in the platform. This wallet service can be used for all the digital payment services. The payment service introduced a traditional gifting system on Chinese New Year in 2014 that became famous among the users and thereby generating millions and millions of users in the platform. After the hit of this feature the company dominated the market leaving behind the famous tech giant Alibaba Group’s Alipay. The value of Alipay in the last quarter in 2016 was 54 percent and WeChat Pay reached 37%. It might seem that the percentage is higher, but according to the company’s records the share vale has dropped than the previous year, while WeChat scored the board.

These are some of the features and services offered by the messenger app that taps many users to join the platform. And connecting personal and professional connections under a single forum is easy for the users.

Author Bio:

Anand Rajendran is CEO and Co-Founder of  Zoplay, best PHP scripts development company located in India. Zoplay is a part of Casperon Technologies a leading social and mobile development company which is developing , leading innovative and collaborative software development teams to deliver major software applications like SCIMBO - Whatsapp Clone Script. I'm a Tech geek, Digital marketing expert, Entrepreneur, and Atheist who loves to write everything about PHP Scripts and mobile application development.