Tencent super app WeChat strikes fine balance as everyday tool and public-service platform

Super app WeChat, operated by video gaming and social media giant Tencent Holdings, continues to strike a delicate balancing act between its role as a major revenue stream for the Shenzhen-based company and a vital public-service platform in mainland China, according to analysts.

With more than 1.3 billion monthly active users (MAUs), the 13-year old WeChat – marketed as Weixin on the mainland – is now a well-entrenched online tool for everyday life in the world’s second-largest economy. From messaging and video conferencing to mobile payments, shopping and mobile gaming, WeChat is an ubiquitous platform whose technical updates and policy changes are closely scrutinised by the country’s public and private sectors.

WeChat’s success as a do-everything app was even cited by billionaire Elon Musk, chief executive at Tesla and founder of SpaceX, as a model for transforming Twitter, later renamed X, when he agreed to buy the US microblogging platform for US$44 billion in 2022.

“There’s no WeChat equivalent outside China,” Musk said at the time, according to a South China Morning Post report. “You basically live on WeChat in China. If we can recreate that with Twitter, we’ll be a great success.”