3 most popular social media sites in china you need to know

WeChat

What is wechat

WeChat is a free application launched by Tencent on January 21, 2011 to provide instant messaging services for smart devices . WeChat supports free (with a small amount of network traffic) voice messages, videos, pictures and texts.

As of the second quarter of 2016, WeChat has covered more than 94% of smartphones in China, with 806 million monthly active users, and users in more than 200 countries and over 20 languages. In addition, the total number of WeChat public accounts of various brands has exceeded 8 million, the number of mobile applications has exceeded 85,000, advertising revenue has increased to RMB 3.679 billion and WeChat payment users have reached around 400 million .

Users can add friends and follow public platform by “shake”, “search number”, “nearby people” and scan QR code. At the same time, through WeChat, we can share the content to friends and share the wonderful content to WeChat’s “Moment”.

The evolution of Wechat

In 2011, Tencent released its first version of Wechat. Starting from version 2.0, WeChat rapidly began to thrive: in May 2011, WeChat 2.0 was released, supporting voice chat, which quickly replaced traditional cell phone text messages; in August 2011, it supported viewing nearby people and cell phone number registration, it gradually became an app for daily socializing; in April 2012, it supported the Moments( where people can post photos, videos, and words to express one’s feelings, share their happy moments); in July 2012, it launched public accounts and supported video chatting, so self-media flourished; in 2013, Scan and WeChat Pay were launched, laying the technical foundation for commercial services; in 2015, WeChat Red Packet was launched, and WeChat Pay instantly became a strong counterpart to Alipay …… Tencent’s financial report showed that by the end of the third quarter of 2020, the number of WeChat monthly active accounts reached 1.213 billion. This means that most people in China can’t live without WeChat in their daily lives, and WeChat has become the most popular App in the country.

Wechat mini program

mini programs are “mini-apps” built on the WeChat platform. WeChat allows third-party companies to develop mini programs that provide users with advanced functionality that can be run within an app.This supports WeChat’s goal of providing an integrated experience for users.

By opening up their platform, a rich ecosystem of WeChat developers was born, a common feature of Apple’s app ecosystem.

They are considered WeChat’s own “app of apps” and have three benefits:
Instant loading
Ease of use
They don’t consume your phone’s memory.

This technology allows WeChat to bundle features and functionality into a single mobile native app based on a “super app” model. Users never need to leave the WeChat app.For all these reasons, WeChat has turned into an app store with this technology. The cross-functional ecosystem around it is gradually positioning this “Super App” as the “(social) operating system” for everyday life.

Zhihu

What is zhihu

Zhihu is a mainland Chinese social Q&A site founded on January 26, 2011, with a similar format to its American counterpart Quora. In late February 2012, Zhihu used the slogan “Discover the Bigger World” as its slogan. As of September 20, 2017, Zhihu had over 100 million registered users, 26 million daily active users, one hour of daily visits per capita, and 18 billion monthly views. As of May 2016, Zhihu has generated 10 million questions, 34 million answers and 35 million likes. Zhihu has also developed four mobile apps, including the mobile Zhihu client for Android and iOS, “Zhihu Group”, “Zhihu Daily”, and “Public Welfare”.

Basic features of zhihu

Personal profile

Zhihu is a community-based product and a platform for knowledge accumulation. Therefore, a personal page is especially important as it is a symbol of identity when asking or answering questions. At the same time, for knowledge accumulation, you also need a personal page to record your growth.

Q&A block

This is the most basic and core function of Zhihu, which is the birthplace of content and the key to maintaining user activity. Zhihu is a platform that provides a bridge for people who have doubts and experiences to share, and allows them to share their knowledge on the platform of Zhihu.

Invitation

After you ask a question, you can invite users in related fields to share their answers. On the one hand, this ensures that answer will be created after asking a question, and at the same time, it will be an inspiration for those who are invited.

People ask for knowledge more than they share it. Therefore, the number of people who ask questions is far greater than the number of people who answer. In order to keep the platform running well, Zhihu’s invitation function plays a very good role. You can invite some of the top leaders in the industry to express their understanding of the views, thus ensuring the quality of the answers.

Zhihu Bookstore

Zhihu Bookstore is an official e-book reading platform launched by Zhihu. The purpose of Zhihu Bookstore is to let users discover and read Zhihu e-books more quickly, and to help authors expand their community influence.

Zhihu Column

Zhihu Column is a writing tool launched by Zhihu for its users. Users can create columns and become columnists to share their expertise and related opinions with other users. You can write multiple posts under each column for others to read, and the posts under that column all focus on the same topic.

In addition to the normal Q&A format, Zhihu has also created a column module. Every credible Zhihu user can apply to open their own column. The theme and direction of the column is no longer restricted, and users are free to plan the operation of the column, which helps highlight the content strengths of the creator and attract more followers.

Xiaohongshu

What is Xiaohongshu

Xiaohongshu is a social media and e-commerce platform. It has been described as the “Instagram of China”. Xiaohongshu has more than 300 million registered users and 85 million monthly active users. According to the report, 70 percent of its users were born after 1990, and nearly 90 percent are women. The app allows users to post, discover and share product reviews, which are most often related to beauty and health. It is well known that travel bloggers regularly post content about travel and leisure destinations on the platform. Xiaohongshu also operates RED store, where Chinese users sell international products.

Xiaohongshu notes

The content on the Little Red Book notes is mainly the introduction of the user’s own consumption experience, which involves the evaluation of the texture, price and shopping experience of the goods, which will have a guiding effect on the purchase of other users reading the notes. If the content of these notes is inaccurate, it will be extremely harmful to the user experience, so the team of Xiaohongshu has done a lot of work in identifying the authenticity of the content.

word-of-mouth marketing

There is no better way to increase the conversion rate of products than word-of-mouth from real users, just like users will definitely go to the comment section to read users’ comments before buying something. Xiaohongshu is a community of real users’ word-of-mouth sharing, and the whole community is a huge word-of-mouth database, and the notes of the experts are the source of word-of-mouth.

the selection of products is precise

The Xiaohongshu community has accumulated a large amount of consumer comments, as if tens of millions of users are discovering and sharing good things from all over the world on the same platform. In addition, the browsing, liking and collecting behaviors of platform users generate a large amount of data. Through these data, Xiaohongshu can accurately analyze the needs of users and ensure that the goods purchased are user-promoted.

personalized recommendations

With the development of technology, based on the in-depth machine learning, the content in the community will be matched to the user interested in it, so that it can accurately help the user to find the most appropriate products.

conclusions

As brands and companies try to expand into The Chinese market — or reach out to Chinese immigrants around the world — they will need to better understand the intricacies of the Chinese market and many Chinese products and services. That, combined with the sheer scale of these platforms, means social media watchers will need to take a closer look, if they haven’t already.