101 Things About China – Tech in Hand

One could be forgiven for thinking the zombie apocalypse had made an early arrival in Beijing. Every morning, millions of commuters squeeze into the Chinese capital’s subways, buses and taxis. Moving as one, they shamble along, and much of the time more heads are bent over smartphones than not.

If you peer over the shoulders of your fellow commuters here, it’s easy enough to see what they’re doing. Some watch movies or play games, but a surprising number of travelers are reading: novels, the morning news, and quite often, microblog feeds. Cell phone market saturation in China is at near totality, and smartphones are set to occupy a larger percentage of that share in the coming year.

We’ve talked about Chinese social media on this blog before, but as we look toward a new year of challenges and opportunities in the country that has taken a strong lead as the world’s largest smartphone market, it’s time to sneak another peek at how China’s mobile online media is evolving, and how companies can make better use of these developing trends.

WeChat

Many of the major social networking app players in the smartphone market will be familiar to avid China watchers, but there’s one rising star that took 2012 by storm: WeChat.

Tencent’s WeChat (originally known as Weixin) revolutionized communication among urbanites in 2012, with a reported 200 million users signing up for the free text and voice messaging platform in China alone. Any user with an internet connection can send texts to contacts, conduct group chats, send images or post them to a public feed like Weibo’s. Regular updates since the app launched have enabled users to sync contacts from Tencent’s powerhouse QQ instant messaging service. More recently, the service has started to take off overseas (where it encountered brief controversy over censored search results), with users being able to log into WeChat via their Facebook accounts.

How to monetize WeChat is the next big question, and part of what will make their expansion of services something to watch in the coming year. The Wall Street Journal reported that Tencent’s online payment platform TenPay will be incorporated into WeChat, enabling users to make purchases in stores by simply scanning a code. Already WeChat has made it possible for account holders – both corporate and personal – to create their own QR codes. With a built-in QR code reader, users simply scan the codes where they find them to start following friends and companies, and rapid adoption has seen the codes popping up everywhere from social media profiles to restaurant menus.

Sina Weibo

Sina Weibo continues to be a major player both on PCs – where it is still mostly accessed – and on mobile phones. Sina Weibo’s registered users tipped 400 million last year, no small number of whom were posting on New Year’s Eve, when the microblogging platform logged 729,521 messages in the first minute of 2013. These are landmark figures for what may be a big year for Sina Weibo, as upstarts like WeChat have pushed the company readjusts focus on the mobile internet market.

For companies with a China presence, using Weibo is a no-brainer. But those who remain under the impression that all these users and their followers are China based should think twice – plenty of politicians, companies and celebrities from outside the country have recognized the value of keeping Weibo accounts in both English and Chinese. Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson posts to his Weibo through an assistant in Mandarin to reach his 72,800 “fans”, as Weibo followers are termed. Bill Gates’ posts also show up in Mandarin for more than 3 million followers. And recently Brad Pitt made waves for opening a Weibo account before even securing a Twitter handle. With services now available in English, expect to see the number of Western users rise as they seek to encourage investment, promote campaigns and spread old-fashioned good will.

Utilizing these very popular, and very free means of communication are great ways to hear what people have to say and to respond accordingly, rather than simply talking at customers. The popularity of both shows that Chinese consumers have a continued desire for engagement and interaction through platforms that make them feel like individuals, rather than like faceless members of the morning commute. Through keeping an eye on what’s trending, companies have a great chance to position themselves where they want to be, both in the market, and in the hands of their potential customers.