Weixin: How Much is Too Much?

The Background

Weixin is a Chinese social media app that aims to take over every part of its users’ daily life. If you want to call a taxi, check the news, shop online or check the news, Weixin has you covered. Weixin has over 300 million users across the world. In every country but mainland China the app is called WeChat rather than Weixin. Weixin uses every chance it can to keep you within its ecosystem. If you wish to view a news article from another site, Weixin will launch the link in its own browser rather than taking you out of their ecosystem.

The Good

I can see how this can be helpful in day-to-day life. In America we have an app or multiple apps for everything that we do. If you want to order food for delivery do you choose DoorDash, Postmates, or UberEATS? If you want to order a ride share, do you use Uber or Lyft? If you want to browse the web do you use Chrome, Edge, OperaGX, DuckDuckGo, or one of the countless others that you can choose from? In the same way reading those questions can be exhausting, it can be exhausting for users to constantly switch apps for everything a person might want to do during the day. In using Weixin Chinese citizens and visitors can do it all in one app. The closest app in America would be Uber/UberEATS which allows you to both call a ride and order delivery.

The Bad

There are several drawbacks that I can see in having one app that can do mostly everything a person would day-to-day. The first is that it could harm innovation across the space as whole if competition is being pushed out due to everyone using one app. The second is what happens if Weixin begins to pick and choose what they allow to be shown on their app. An example would be if a certain fast-food chain really wanted to appear first when a user googled anything about food, what could stop Weixin from taking a paycheck from the company to hide its competition on its search engine and store pages. Weixin could also price local cab drivers that cannot compete with Weixin’s low prices.

The Ugly

In China this app works, however I do not believe that something like this would be able to work in the U.S. In America I feel as though there is too much competition for a singular brand to stick out so much that it can push the others out. The U.S. government has also shown how weary it is on allowing Chinese software and products into the country. TikTok has been a large point of contention dude to the constant possible of the app being banned due to its Chinese parent company Tencent. Tencent is also the owner of Weixin and the international version WeChat. I believe that if WeChat became too popular in the United States the government would force Tencent to either sell the company or be banned in the U.S. The idea of an app that can do everything for a person in their daily lives is something that seems very convenient but could lead to more issues that it would solve.

Student Blog