Thanks in no small part to a massive marketing drive in Europe at a cost of over €200m social platform WeChat (known locally as Weixin) is rapidly spreading its wings beyond China's borders. It is a movement to get excited about, because WeChat has the potential to herald major changes to the social media landscape of the Western world.
WeChat is still young, making its rise even more notable. Its 2011 release came two years after the launches of Chinese microblogging giant Sina Weibo, which at its height boasted 600 million users, and partially-comparable US platform Whatsapp who announced an active user base of half a billion in April of this year. That same month WeChat was considerably behind with 355 million active users, a figure which nevertheless nestled it comfortably among Far Eastern rivals KakaoTalk of Korea and Japanese instant messaging behemoth LINE.
That, however, was back in April. Uptake has continued to rise at a staggering rate in the five months since and active user figures on WeChat now stand at over 438 million. Perhaps more significant than growing sign-up numbers is the emigration of users across from other platforms; followers of Asian consumer technology now speak openly of 'The Great Exodus' of netizens from Weibo to WeChat, evoking memories of MySpace's demise as a social media powerhouse during the rise of Facebook.
Earlier this year a study of Weibo conducted by East China Normal University for the Telegraph showed a decline of 43% in the number of users posting 40 times per day over two years. These statistics are even more damning when aligned to the fact that China's internet population continues to grow by 10% annually. To what extent can the switch-off from Weibo be attributed to the considerably more extensive functionality of WeChat?
WeChat has rapidly evolved from an instant messaging application to a truly multipurpose tool, providing users with 15 core features. It is entirely mobile and tablet-based whilst still being populated with company pages that can send notifications direct to users' phones, meaning communication between brand and user is instant. Crucially, WeChat also enables users to connect their smartphones to their bank accounts, an extension of functionality to which much of the platform's success has been attributed.
The app provides a setting for both microblogging and online retail, whilst also offering an IM service, video calling, and a game-playing portal. It has run and set the pace in a world where even major players like Twitter are only just taking their first steps into commercial functionality with features such as the newly rolled-out 'buy button'.
Heading the queue of brands seeking to establish themselves on WeChat are football giants FC Barcelona, the club that brands itself a global frontrunner in the area of New Technologies and can boast the largest fan base among all sports teams on major social networks.
Last month Barcelona heralded WeChat as "a leader [among social networks], not just in China but in Asia and the world as a whole" as they launched two new channels on the platform in English and Mandarin. Building on the increasingly popular Chinese version of the club's official website, the Catalan giants have confidently stated that this new alliance will increase contact with their estimated 20 million-strong fan base in China.
Among other sports clubs to have forays into this market are Liverpool FC. Using the confidence springboard of their extensive ties in the Far East, including official websites for Indonesia and Thailand, Liverpool were the first Premier League side to establish an official presence on WeChat. This was done as early as August of last year, with the Merseysiders announcing themselves on the platform via an exclusive voice message to fans from captain Steven Gerrard. Other top clubs will surely follow.
What WeChat are not yet doing is encouraging the content within their app to be more user-friendly for non-Mandarin readers. This remains a stumbling block for worldwide growth and is due to the fact that brands using WeChat are looking to tap into an Asian market rather than target English speakers, which is currently done via Twitter and Facebook.
Will an en-masse user migration of the like currently being witnessed from Weibo ever occur from Twitter or Facebook to WeChat? For now this still remains an unlikely prospect, though the social media giants will have noted the rise of the platform and it may in time pressure them to adapt. Perhaps either way, the future of social is multipurpose.