How to transform Twitter into a “everything app” like WeChat🧧

21 Jan

Another Chinese New Year and another Spring Festival Gala viewed by billions of people worldwide. According to iyiou.com, the average cost for 15 seconds adverts during the Spring Festival Gala was 3.0 million USD. The 2015 Spring Festival Gala saw over 200 million users link their bank card with WeChat Payment in just 2 days. What can Elon Musk do to transform Twitter into a “everything app” like WeChat?

Unsurprisingly, Twitter’s new leader Elon Musk wants to make Twitter the everything app like WeChat. When one of the Twitter employees pointed out the success of WeChat in China was closely bound with government support, the former richest man in the world was uninterested in how things couldn’t be done, but expected solutions to make it happen.

As a big fan of the persuasive design solution, I would like to share some thoughts on the design of WeChat in relation to Brain Jeffrey Fogg’s analysis of Mass Interpersonal Persuasion.

Fogg argues that the launch of Facebook in 2007 was an emergence of a new form of persuasion, which he called - Mass Interpersonal Persuasion (MIP) (Fogg, 2008). Fogg states that MIP has six components, which are Persuasive Experience, Automated Structure, Social Distribution, Rapid Cycle, Huge Social Graph and Measured Impact.

Before the pervasiveness of smart phones, the biggest social network online in China was Tencent QQ, which had a user base of 170 million in 2011 according to Baidu Encyclopaedia (Baidu, Inc., n.d.). Instead of promoting the mobile version of Tencent QQ, Tencent launched a new brand called WeChat for smart phones. Since the launch of WeChat in January 2011, WeChat’s users have exceeded over 50 million within the first year. The data of this Huge Social Graph tracks very closely to Facebook’s growth in 2007, also within a similar time period, as Fogg discussed (Fogg, 2008).

Interpersonal relationships, “guanxi”, are imperative in Chinese society. With the widespread use of smart phones, many users fear a type of “anticipation of losses”. The fear of missing out by not having their social contacts on their mobile devices and the hope that something good might happen, both win out over the previous physical constraint of being in front of a computer for social networking. Besides personal social pressures, users are also afraid for their careers if they are not present in their work chat groups on WeChat. As Fogg states that “Persuasive Experience in MIP gain power by tapping into social influence dynamics.” (Fogg, 2008). This particular Persuasive Experience was ground-breaking in China. The change in people’s social networking behaviour from Tencent QQ on a computer to WeChat on a smart phone was inevitable in China when smart phones became ubiquitous. Consequently, many smart phone retailers in China would have WeChat preinstalled for users when purchasing as a sales incentive.

Users can login into WeChat through their mobile numbers or QQ account numbers, and WeChat can sync users’ contacts from both their QQ accounts and their phone books. Once a user starts using WeChat, the app will ask you if you would like to add all your QQ friends or all the people in your phone book. With simply one click of a button, the user can send out invitations to all their QQ contacts and/or phone book contacts. Since 2012, WeChat has had an embedded QR code, accessible by millions of WeChat users without needing to do anything other than maybe one update. The simplicity of many Automated Structures in WeChat not only makes Social Distribution extremely easy, but also the cycle time between getting involved and involving others is very short.

Exchanging money between WeChat users is extremely simple and either side can scan or be scanned and to confirm the transaction with a couple of clicks. The Rapid Cycle of MIP is embodied vividly in the ubiquitous use of WeChat QR codes in China. Since WeChat added the QR code in 2012, the functionalities of the QR code have become ingrained into many parts of people’s everyday life. A Wall Street Journal article from 2017 quoted from a Chinese Marketing Consultant and Technology blogger, who stated “Scanning QR code has partly replaced exchanging business cards, sending web links, making online searches and swiping credit cards,” (Yuan, 2017). The same year, a WeChat video of a beggar approaching people with a printout QR code went viral and had over 50 million views on Tencent Video. The WeChat QR code is even visible in Dublin Airport these days.

The Measured Impact component of MIP is best shown in the WeChat Shake function during the most popular TV show of the year – The Spring Festival Gala. Users are offered red envelopes (traditional Chinese monetary gifts) by shaking their smart phones at specific moments during the show. The show broadcasts the amount of money that is given and the number of users that have interacted with this activity during the live show. In 2014, there were hundreds of millions of users who had interacted with this feature (Budiu, 2016).

In order to make Twitter more like WeChat, a variety of new features and functionalities are required, such as:

Implementing a payment system allowing users to exchange money or make online purchases.

Adding an inbuilt e-commerce platform for businesses to sell products and services directly to users.
Developing a social media marketplace where users can buy and sell goods and services.
Adding a gaming feature that allows users to play games with one another within the twitter platform.
Introduce a live stream feature to promote the payment service with celebrities.
Developing a more robust private messaging feature, allowing users to send and receive messages, videos, and photos with each another.

However, considering the culture, society and the market demands of different countries, I would strongly recommend that Mr. Musk hires appropriate UX researchers for each country necessary to win market share.