What are the differences between the two social networks? Which one is better? And how can they develop themselves to be more successful?
Facebook’s strong points
Facebook is really good in terms of its design. The social network is better organized and not obtrusive because users can access menus at any moment on the left, while the chat remains visible. Thus, it is much less confusing for users. They don’t have to switch between conversations and menus like they do on WeChat.
Facebook is really eye-catchy thanks to its videos. Videos are so popular nowadays and users often watch online. Facebook integrated video content into the feed without it being too clunky.
Finally, Facebook is better than WeChat for its targeted ads. Facebook includes lots of advertisements but they are not so aggressive for customers because Facebook kept them discrete, on panels at the side. In that way, the ads are a good tracking tool on Facebook and platform generates significant revenue from them.
WeChat is arguably a better user platform
WeChat doesn’t have to worry about competition from Facebook because most of WeChat’s users are located in China, where Facebook is blocked.
But there are some key differences and the Chinese social media giant is arguably ahead of Facebook when many recent features are taken into consideration. It is developing into a whole social, lifestyle, information and shopping app.
One of WeChat’s most successful features is the payment system allowing people to transfer money to friends, pay their bills or even scan QR codes for payment in shops. As 200,000 people attached their credit card to the application, they no longer need to bring their wallet anymore when they go shopping. It is really useful, innovative and not implemented in Europe yet. It combines your wallet with your digital, social platform.
There is more to WeChat that just payments, Wechat offers many other services thanks to its numerous partners around China. In fact, it is possible to book a taxi with Uber’s Chinese competitor: Didi Chuxing, but we can also order a meal, book a ticket to go to the cinema and arrange an appointment with a doctor through WeChat. To sum up, we can do almost everything on WeChat and that is really useful for customers.
Finally, WeChat is much better than Facebook to communicate with potential consumers for businesses. It has over 10,000,000 official public accounts registered, some of them becoming real companies by themselves. Users can easily interact with these accounts and thus are well informed about the brands’ products, novelties and can benefit from sales and promotions directly through the app.
WeChat inspired Facebook in this regard
Facebook is copying WeChat menus to allow customers to converse with public accounts and companies. It registered 11,000 messenger bots in order to offer some “suggested answers” to users.
It also wants to integrate a payment platform like there is on WeChat and mix social experience and e-commerce. In general, Facebook is trying to generate more revenue from services rather than ads.
The Chinese social media is thus in many ways advanced and offers an intelligent model which is inspiring the market leader, Facebook.
3 comments
Laura Honey
Wechat sounds amazing! I am going to China at the end of the year and am installing it on my phone now to slowly slowly ease into things. Haha not having my native social media will make me feel more alien :p !