![]() ![]() Smaller units also allow everyone on the team, from senior management to interns, to offer their thoughts on new innovations.” Breaking down the organization in this way helped with speed and ownership. ![]() “The team is further broken down into multiple smaller units of 50-150 people. Starting from a small team of 10 in a small bunker, the team has now grown to 2,000 strong,” explained the representative. To keep agility in product innovation, organizational structure is kept flat. “WeChat believes that the stronger the shared values, the less demand for formal processes. A culture of openessĭespite its gargantuan growth (WeChat boasts more than 1.2 billion users today), the WeChat team led by its creator still employs a flat organizational structure where anyone can contribute ideas – even though the team is much larger today than it used to be. “The open platform strategy has successfully brought WeChat from a social networking app to an influential platform, laying a solid foundation for WeChat in the B2B field,” commented the spokesperson. WeChat was no longer just a social media app, it was now a blossoming platform its new, varied feature set making it the first all-in-one “super app” in the smartphone era. The catalyst came when Tencent opened up its popular platform to third-party developers and content creators for free, even providing miniature apps called ‘ Mini Programs’ which provide a range of ready-to-use features and tools, enabling it to crowdsource the building out of its platform. The app has become a household brand since those early days, enjoying huge popularity among Chinese-speaking communities throughout the world. Source: Shutterstockĭickie Liang-Hong Ke, a Sloan Fellow at the London Business School who has studied WeChat and Tencent, agrees, explaining that, when WeChat adapted its open strategy, launched the Official Accounts and created the WeChat Pay ecosystem, it “successfully converted itself from a social networking app to an influential platform.” The ‘super app’ continues to evolve its ever-growing range of services. WeChat began gaining followers, amassing 100 million registered users by March 2012, and like many of Tencent’s offerings at the time, started gaining a reputation as a copy of other similar, successful platforms such as WhatsApp and Kik. WeChat’s innovative product culture has seen the insanely popular social messaging app develop into its own platform – how did it get here?Ĭhinese technology behemoth Tencent Holdings has grown from strength to strength over the last decade, releasing a dizzying array of internet properties, riding a global gaming boom – it even overtook Facebook for a while to be declared the world’s most valuable social network company with a market cap in excess of US$540 billion.ĭespite earning the lion’s share of its active revenue from the lucrative gaming market, Tencent’s original products were social-based: it first launched a free PC-based instant messaging service that became known as QQ in 1999, before the launch of the mobile version MobileQQ saw Tencent turn its first profit of US$1.2 million, from sales of US$5.9 million.įast forward ten years and a growing portfolio of dozens of tools and services ranging from digital content to fintech platforms, Tencent was still hung up on social messaging platforms and released a Chinese language smartphone app called Weixin in early 2011, which within a year would come to be known internationally as the uber-popular social media platform WeChat.Shares in Tencent have been battered this week after a state media article criticised video games - an industry that Tencent dominates in China - as "spiritual opium". It will introduce a Personal Information Protection Law that calls for tech platforms to impose stricter measures to ensure secure storage of user data. The company said last month it was upgrading WeChat's security technology to "align with relevant laws and regulations".Ĭhina is revising privacy and data security policies. Users on China's Twitter-like Weibo platform said that steps to register a new account on the app appeared to be the same as before the suspension. ![]() Tencent confirmed the resumption but declined to provide further comment. The resumption of new user registrations on China's dominant instant messaging platform was first spotted by social media users on Thursday morning. SHANGHAI, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Tencent Holdings' (0700.HK) WeChat has resumed registrations of new users in mainland China, after suspending them last month to upgrade its security technology. ![]()
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