The Business of Fashion
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
HONG KONG, China — Tencent Holdings Ltd. allowed users of its WeChat instant-messaging app to sell goods online, bringing Asia's largest Internet company into closer competition with China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.
Tencent introduced an in-app function for holders of public accounts of Weixin, as WeChat is known in Chinese, to upload photos of merchandise, manage orders and communicate with customers, according to a posting on the Shenzhen, China-based company’s website. Shoppers at the so-called little WeChat stores can make purchases with Weixin Payment, Tencent’s third- party payment system.
WeChat has about 396 million monthly active users and has been valued at as much as $64 billion by CLSA Ltd. Tencent is trying to make money from the app through advertising, gaming and e-commerce services as it competes against Alibaba for the estimated 302 million Chinese who shop online.
“It’s great in terms of moving forward with their monetization plans; it’s another revenue stream,” said Stephen Yang, an analyst at Sun Hung Kai Financial Ltd. in Hong Kong. “Hopefully this will become another profit center for them.”
ADVERTISEMENT
The announcement came a day after the official People’s Daily newspaper criticized WeChat for not being as “pure” as it used to be. The commentary in the People’s Daily said that increased advertising and promotions had changed the nature of WeChat, which began as a platform to communicate with friends.
Tencent vowed to limit the amount of marketing on its Moments function, which allows users to see photos and postings of friends, the company said on its official Sina Weibo microblog account.
By Lulu Yilun Chen; Editors: Michael Tighe, Brendan Scott, Suresh Seshadri
Successful social media acquisitions require keeping both talent and technology in place. Neither is likely to happen in a deal for the Chinese app, writes Dave Lee.
TikTok’s first time sponsoring the glitzy event comes just as the US effectively deemed the company a national security threat under its current ownership, raising complications for Condé Nast and the gala’s other organisers.
BoF Careers provides essential sector insights for fashion's technology and e-commerce professionals this month, to help you decode fashion’s commercial and creative landscape.
The algorithms TikTok relies on for its operations are deemed core to ByteDance overall operations, which would make a sale of the app with algorithms highly unlikely.