As an American consumer, it seems that all revolutionary ideas are born in Silicon Valley or China. Weixin, (pronounced way-shin), is no exception. They’re a Chinese app that has hit the nail on the head for giving consumers what they want: A one-stop shop for virtually everything… virtually.
Let’s rewind to the early 2000’s when average consumers were JUST beginning to own cell phones, were still carrying around digital cameras, still had “pen-pals” (gosh I hope you readers are of the same generation as me… does everyone know what a pen-pal is?), and life became REALLY exciting when we realized our cell phone could now make calls, send chats, send emails, and take photos. Let’s call this Phase 1.
It wasn’t too much longer that companies began creating apps. It seemed to have started with social media and email providers, Google, and then it took off from there when banks and other financial institutions created mobile banking. The rest is history. When I look at my phone, I have about 6 pages of apps. Nearly everything I could ever need is in the palm of my hand, I just have to find the right app, remember my password, load my payment information, and hope that I don’t get distracted with the 200 notifications I receive per hour. Let’s call this Phase 2.
Then Weixin, in their brilliant Chinese way, created what I’m calling Phase 3. Weixin took a number of functions that would normally be spread across several apps and created a single app to do it all! Imagine deleting those 6 pages of apps on your phone and having ONE app for messaging, facetime, Snaps, email, ride shares, online banking, shopping, etc.
“Weixin is more than a combination of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and eBay. Audiences can do almost anything via Weixin, which makes the platform particularly appealing. With unlimited media choices available to users today, audiences are doing whatever they can to reduce ‘search costs.’ If audiences can get all they want from one platform, why bother to find other options.”
Know your audience
Through culturally-appropriate Campaigns, partnerships with small businesses (such as taxi services), and being in the RIGHT PLACE at the RIGHT TIME, Weixin has become a 100 Billion dollar social media platform. Needless to say, they know their audience.
But wait, people ALWAYS have their cellphones with them, so isn’t Weixin always there? YES – precisely. Smart, right? Weixin slowly made its way into the everyday routines and habits of its users….. Now THAT’S the gateway to behavior change.
What could be more perfect…. Weixin knows where all of its users are at any given time, who they’re talking to, what content they’re engaging in, what they’re shopping for, etc. For Weixen, they’re able to really know their audience and personalize each users’ experience. For certain governments, however, this may pose a problem.
On Reporters Without Borders (https://safety.rsf.org/investigating-wechat-an-introduction-to-social-apps-wechat-and-weixin/) they investigated WeChat and Weixin and brought up a valid security/privacy concern, a Snipit of that is shown below. I’m of the innocent thought that as long as you’re not sharing anything that you shouldn’t be, this shouldn’t matter, however what if the information was used for evil? What if false accusations were made?
Check this out and comment below what your thoughts are about this level of surveillance and censorship, or of course other parts of this blog!
Rural Thymes 
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