(Chinese Version)

On January 19, WeChat launched version 6.1, with three main updated functions: you can now send red envelopes, or money gifts, as attachments; you can keep your custom emoticons when you replace a phone; and you can search for content within your friend circle and restaurants in your vicinity.

WeChat is rather like its own planetary ecosystem. Zhang Xiaolong’s mission has been to build this ecosystem with his own two hands, to rebuild the planet Earth in this new age of the mobile Internet explosion. The difference is that this Earth is a virtual one, but it now seems that this virtual Earth is no less teeming with new life than the one on which we plant our two feet. To build an ecosystem for the people in this virtual world, Zhang Xiaolong has sacrificed blood, sweat, and tears. Finally, he is being compensated for all of his hard work, and the forest ecosystem is taking shape.

And yet, the formation of the WeChat ecosystem does not mean that this mission has come to an end. On the contrary, the existence value of WeChat ecosystem is Zhang Xiaolong’s next strategy on the chessboard. Ma Yun said that: “WeChat was a good card to play, but it was trumped.” This writer disagrees completely with that assertion. Let’s see how Zhang Xiaolong uses the WeChat ecosystem to play a beautiful hand, before he reshuffles and moves onto the next round.

Breaking through the final barriers in mobile development, WeChat sows seeds for new life

WeChat JS-SDK, a public platform for developers, is not only WeChat’s strategy to kill APP. Aided with its own voice, location, sharing, card voucher, and payment features, among other unique capabilities, WeChat is completely overhauling web page development in the mobile era. Harnessing the power of tens of millions of WeChat developers and using a battle strategy that is free of charge, mobile development is opening up a new battleground. But WeChat’s most grassroots mobile development is also breaking through the final barriers in mobile development and is sowing seeds for new life in the next generation of the WeChat ecosystem.

The special features of HTML5, such as cross-platform apps and adaptive web, are already mobile developers’ meat and potatoes. The development of WeChat JS-SDK leverages WeChat’s large public platform and WeChat’s own special functions.

Developers are all happy with it, taking to it like a duck in water, and WeChat is leveraging the power of its new trick to get developers in line and ready to engage in economic development on the foundation of WeChat’s ecosystem. 

The intention in all of this swordplay is not to conceal anything or to force any quick decisions between WeChat and APP, but is meant rather to lay an economic foundation and launch a long war between the two.

In this new age of mobile Internet, WeChat has gotten its hands on the first tickets to the mobile Internet age. The mobile development market has only just begun, and entering the field of mobile development is imperative. WeChat must firmly grab hold of this golden opportunity. But the involvement of developers alone is obviously not good enough. The long-coveted WeChat public platform is aimed at developers, implementing a distribution model and leveraging its power to make WeChat first in the field of mobile development. It’s saddled up and left the stable, leaving latecomers behind in the dust. 

As the mobile development market opens up, WeChat is not only sowing the seeds for new mobile development, but the associated added value is also causing WeChat’s commercial value to skyrocket, and WeChat’s service and interactivity will be vastly improved.

Complete overhaul in mobile search and user interface

WeChat is currently carrying out a massive publicity campaign for its layout’s ultimate weapon—Friends Circle search, a directory in which one can search for content posted by friends within the last 6 months, including shared links, pictures, friends’ information, etc. As it now stands, WeChat’s Friend Circle search adds on to previous functions of search among friends, WeChat public accounts, group chat, collections, and public account articles. Search within the WeChat site is already underway.

If WeChat search were only intended to serve the WeChat ecosystem, then it wouldn’t count as mobile search. But as careful users have recently discovered, when you enter a keyword into the search box, you will find more than the requested content from within the WeChat system. You will also be able to find relevant content from network platforms outside of WeChat. From all of this, it is becoming evident that WeChat is gradually starting to shift away from the strong privacy of social networking and is becoming a more open technological platform.

Search is the window through which users can access all content on WeChat, opening onto all of WeChat’s content repositories, including media, social networks, games, e-commerce, all the way down the list to grassroots mobile development on the WeChat public platform.

Search function in many ways is like a drawbridge crossing a moat, safeguarding the development of the WeChat ecosystem. If WeChat didn’t have a search function, that would mean that the entire ecosystem of WeChat was without its drawbridge; the value of WeChat’s public account content, Friend Circle social networks, games, and even e-commerce is only accessed through the filter of the search. It’s only the search function that makes the WeChat ecosystem a complete system.

The next steps in WeChat’s strategic and ambitious plan is WeChat search as a tool in service of other WeChat functions, and as a service window and sentinel for WeChat users. These latest developments in WeChat search are just the beginning.

WeChat’s mobile e-commerce won’t die

E-commerce has always been WeChat’s biggest headache, and decentralization hasn’t improved matters. Micro-commerce is currently flooding WeChat’s e-commerce, and from a strategic perspective, the survival of e-commerce on WeChat is far from certain. This is because WeChat e-commerce still follows the traditional frameworks and routines attached to WeChat. Decentralization is necessary because of the fragmentation of the mobile age, but decentralization in WeChat e-commerce is tepid, clearly lacking in actual control and management.

But the heart of WeChat e-commerce will never die, and allowing WeChat users to send virtual red envelopes to businesses is an extraordinarily powerful function for e-commerce—providing the allure of cold, hard cash.

WeChat is also expanding the search function to search for restaurants in users’ vicinity, a new entryway to O2O (online to offline) commerce that is accelerating WeChat’s commercialization. Informed sources have disclosed that WeChat is currently beta testing a new function that adds a restaurant vicinity function to the user vicinity function. This means that WeChat will be presenting restaurant businesses to the massive population of WeChat users. This gate of entry will serve as border control for WeChat’s O2O or e-commerce, and its importance should not be underestimated.

Friend Circle, a media ecosystem of 600 million users

If there is a circle there must be an ecosystem, and if there is an ecosystem there must be content. Friend Circle is another media platform in addition to the public accounts platform. WeChat will advertise in the Friend Circle through the Feed. Friend Circle is a collection of WeChat content resources, but WeChat has never made use of that collection. All this time, the links between public accounts in friend circles, the user graphics and user messages have all been WeChat’s neglected treasure.

According to media reports, WeChat wants to reduce the distance between public accounts and users and to make resources like Friend Circles more active through streaming advertisements. This is seen as another one of WeChat’s masterpieces. As such, WeChat has completely changed from being a private social interaction platform to being a half-open, half-closed ecosystem, similar to QQ Zone’s transformation. QQ Zone’s half-open, half-closed state has become Tencent’s commercial model. The probability of success for WeChat if it goes down this path is obviously much higher than if it were to follow an e-commerce framework. At this point, the 600 million users who make up WeChat’s media ecosystem are WeChat’s most precious resource, and this dynamic WeChat ecosystem might lead to an explosion of new opportunities.

It is safe to predict that WeChat will not be following the simple development path of a private social network. Instead, WeChat’s next move on the strategic chessboard will be to open up and commercialize. The Empire of the WeChat Ecosystem has only just begun to rise up!

(The article is published and edited with authorization from the author @ Ni Weitao, please note source and hyperlink when reproduce.)

Translated by Jennifer Smith (Senior Translator at ECHO), working for TMTpost.