One Fintech Superapp to Rule Them All
Fintech companies are not the only players here: Facebook and Google are also attempting to expand their role in payments/currency. And keep an eye on Amazon, Uber and Walmart, too.
Life on WeChat
WeChat is China's version of Facebook, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and even Amazon all rolled up into one. What makes connected networking different in Asia? What can we learn about China and about the internet from the...
Tencent’s WeChat Trounces Alibaba at Chinese New Year
I remember a time not long ago when we China tech reporters used to write annual stories about the number of people who sent billions of simple Lunar New Year text greetings over their mobile...
WeChat Comes Under Fire for Rumors, Fake Ads
Tencent’s WeChat has grown so quickly over the last two years that it was almost inevitable that the popular mobile messaging service would come under fire from China’s state-run media or Beijing regulators. The service...
How Tencent Uses WeChat to Target Alibaba
Alibaba founder Jack Ma’s worries about the rapid rise of mobile instant messaging service WeChat appear to be well founded, with word that Tencent’s wildly popular platform will create an exclusive shopping channel for Alibaba’s...
How WhatsApp Can Succeed in China
I haven’t written about Facebook in a while, mostly because the company hasn’t made any concrete moves into China lately despite previous assertions that it would like to enter the market. But the company’s purchase...
WeChat Wrings Money From Unicom, Wangfujing
Much has been written about the meteoric rise of Tencent’s WeChat mobile instant messaging service, with many drawing parallels to the equally rapid ascent of Sina’s Weibo microblogging service starting in 2010. But while Sina...
Chinese Microblogging: Weibos May Be on the Wane
New data is highlighting an online trend that I wrote about last year, namely that microblogs have peaked in popularity and are starting to decline, in a bad sign for leading Web portal Sina as...
WeChat Faces U.S. Skeptics, Banking Friction
I’ve been traveling through Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau these last few days, so thought I’d end the week with a look at Tencent’s hugely popular WeChat mobile messaging service and the challenges it faces...
