Tencent could have continued on with its QQ platform and enjoyed the steady cash flow, but instead it decided to innovate and embrace change. It is important to accept change and not take things for granted. WeChat has since remained focused on offering useful daily services to build a successful ecosystem. It was a very smart move which was one of the cornerstones for its enormous success. The location service was used to display nearby users who are using the platform which prompted users to connect and keep using the platform repeatedly. For any social platform to be successful, it is important for users to build connections. WeChat also used location services in a very interesting manner. WeChat was the first messaging application to offer this service which catapulted its growth in the initial years. This decision was extremely critical as it is difficult to type Chinese alphabets in a normal keyboard. WhatsApp was able to launch it as late as 2015). The first new service launched in 2011 was voice messaging which allowed individuals to send short audio notes (It is worthy to note that iPhone took nearly 3,5 more years to build such a feature.

This was required to motivate the users to switch from other mobile chat solutions to WeChat. In order to have higher user penetration, WeChat realized that they had to offer additional services. This team delivered the first version of WeChat in just three months as a simple messaging and photo sharing app. At the time of launch, Xiaomi’s MI Talk was the leader in the Chinese market with nearly 5 million registered users. Tencent made a bold decision: it created a team of 7 engineers to build a product which will eventually compete with its existing core product. The journey of WeChat’s creation is even more interesting. Tencent presently has a market cap exceeding 730 billion USD. By launching WeChat, Tencent effectively cannibalised its own product and eventually had to close its QQ service. It had revenues of nearly 2 billion USD and a valuation of over 30 billion USD.

Globally it has more than 1.2 billion users taking benefits from its vibrant platform. Yet, very few know that prior to WeChat, Tencent had created a desktop messaging platform QQ which was at that time China’s most popular messaging platform. Tencent is the parent company behind the popular messaging app WeChat – an app which combines features of ecommerce to commuting among other features. Is it a good idea to sit on a success story ? Or is it important to keep innovating ? Here’s a story from China that holds significance in this regard :

Profile tencent 900b wechat