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WeChat, from China internet giant Tencent, released the 2018 WeChat Data Report in a recent 2019 WeChat Open Class in Guangzhou, in order to highlight the growth of users‘ communication and their changing preferences over the past years. As WeChat is the No. 1 social media app in China and a must-have for brands to engage Chinese consumers, Daxue Consulting translated the report to offer some useful insights for international companies leveraging WeChat. The report shows the demographics of WeChat users, the content consumption behavior from each age group and much more.

Here are some facts from the report:  WeChat amounted 1.0825 billion monthly active users last year, in which 63 million users are over 55 years old. There are 45 billion messages being sent and 410 million audio/video calls being successfully connected every day. Compare to 3 years ago, numbers of users used video-call feature increased 570%.

[Source: Translated by Daxue Consulting]

This report has revealed a lot of useful information about the Chinese WeChat users, e.g. people under 55 are still the main user group on WeChat. Yet some Chinese netizens are criticizing the validity of the report, they are wondering for example if the app actually knows when someone goes to sleep, or just stopped using WeChat to pursue activities they find more interesting. Others are condemning WeChat for misusing users’ personal data, “How could WeChat calculate the favorite emojis if they don’t go through our chats?” The company, however, denies storing users’ chat logs and claims that all data in the report was anonymous and deprivatized.

Author: Chencen Zhu

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