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PART 3 Development
Weixin has gone through 4 versions in less than 2 years since it was put out, and every time it change always company addition of distinctive function, which precisely meet users’ demand and scrab large market share:

Weixin 1.0 age – platformization
At the beginning, weixin was devoted to connect different qq channels with weixin, including qq, qqmaile, phone contacts, and qq microblog, by doing so to help users integrate and manage their relationships chain. Faced with fierce competition from both foreign products (Kik, Whatsapp), and native products (Mi Liao), weixin didn’t make outstanding progress but still accumulate.

Weixin 2.0 age – voice message + qqmail reminder
Voice message is nothing special at that time, for Mi Liao’s users’ quantity achieved 1 million, and talkbox was popular all over HK, what weixin overweigh competitors is qqmail reminder, which occupied large customer base targeted on university students, white collar, low and middle level users who are also consumers of smart phone. Logically speaking, qqmail reminder is business integration apparently, but strengthen user stickiness in the end.

Weixin 3.0 age – Shake + Look + Drift Bottle
Weixin established and managed a multi dimensional social network that contains both Acquaintance circle and strangers circle. LBS (location based service) is a new trend for social network, for it can be more flexible and convenient to broader relationships circle.

Weixin 4.0 age – create a new life style

For the mobile internet, weixin is an extended platformized product of qq, so as a platform, weixin developed its interface design and provided various kinds of media and channels to communicate, connect, group-chat, and share (pictures, videos, voice, food, name cards).

PART 4 Function

To make it more clear to analyze mobile users’ sociality demand and mode of mobile social network, weixin’s function can be concluded as the following three points:

Point a: LBS + make strangers friends

Figure 1 demonstrates that on the LBS mobile market, it has accumulated 30.62 million users till end of 2011, and chain growth rate is still high at 67.3% even though decrease a little. It can make sense that LBS still has potentiality to enlarge its market , that’s why internet company get into this area and put out relative product, especially in ‘make-stranger-friends’ vertical segment. LBS check-ins has become typical mobile communication terminal based on mobile phone, so security is still an serious issue, considering tencent’s good reputation, it will be more easily for users to build trust on qq’s channel, compared with other apps.

Point b: social relationships chain integration
Multiple social relationships chain always confused modern people who live a fast-paced life, so how to integrate your different social circles including friends, schoolmates, family, and workmates, there is no doubt that weixin realized such integration successfully and always advanced other competitors.

Point c: voice chat
In the voice area, skype, the voice software giant, didn’t make satisfied results on simultaneous voice techniques as expected, that may because its limit on PC as mobile terminal. While weixin even though deliver asynchronous voice, but excellent user experience won a large market.

More informations abouts Weixin