Is WeChat winning over Facebook to the enterprise?

Is WeChat winning over Facebook to the enterprise?

While the western world relies on LinkedIn accounts for the professional connection, which has now turned being more of a job-search portal than a social professional network. It is true that there is no other platform even close to it.

The competitor, Facebook launched its new service Workplace by Facebook, in October 2016. With the help of this new social network, Facebook aims to provide companies with an easy and way to collaborate and communicate with colleagues. While Facebook is floating at its own pace, looking at the scenario in China it seems WeChat has led the game. The ultra-popular Chinese messaging platform has turned being the most used workplace tool for communication in the country.

China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) shared in its April 2017 report how WeChat has turned so important in China. They surveyed 1000+ WeChat users and 9000+ business account managers using an integrated survey tool in March.

Let’s look at some of the insights which offer further direction to the future of messaging and workplace:

WeChat is HUGE in China

WeChat is a massively used messaging platform across China, just like WhatsApp in the west. It has 890 million monthly active users, +10 million official accounts and +200 thousand third party developers as of Q4 2016. Estimated to have 731 million Chinese users, the mega messenger app is one of the vital parts of China’s mobile internet.

The company is expected to hit a billion monthly active users this year.

Additions to WeChat contacts are mainly work-related

Though the percentage of WeChat users with 200+ contacts in not higher, still there is a sharp increase in the average number of contacts added every month. 57% of the people said that their new contacts are majorly work-related. WeChat-at-work phenomenon affects all the enterprise.

WeChat is mainly used for work

FT last year reported that WeChat has become the primary means of communication at almost every Chinese workplace. It has been reported that 58% of people said that they use the platform daily for work-related actions such as communication and coordination.

WeChat dominates email, phones, texts, etc.

WeChat is the most commonly used communication source as compared to email, phones, text or any other service. Dominating China’s mobile internet almost 90% of people use WeChat for daily work. To keep the up-swing going, WeChat launched Enterprise WeChat which helps in task coordination, sharing files and send notifications. Thus, it has turned being a crucial part of the daily workflow, directly competing with websites and emails.

WeChat for making transactions

The platform is majorly used for making transaction by the business owners. More than half the business owners use WeChat for commerce and coordination. This makes WeChat a major standout from Facebook which launched the payment feature via messenger last year.

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Nearly 90% of the WeChat users stated it as a useful and helpful communication tool for work.

While it seemed the west was leading the way, however, the China-based WeChat has now turned the tables with almost the whole country using the mega-messaging tool with an integrated payment system.