What are WeChat Mini-Programs? A Simple Introduction

WeChat’s early tweaks and optimizations were just the beginning. It soon pioneered an innovative “app-within-an-app” model that changed the way media outlets and advertisers used social platforms.

It was a social and commercial transformation that was powered by—and which further empowered—WeChat. Installed on more than half of all smartphones in China and now linked to many users’ bank accounts, WeChat had the power to nudge hundreds of millions of Chinese into O2O purchases and to pick winners among the competing startups. WeChat Wallet li

In the first 5 months of WeChat, the team didn’t promote it themselves. Instead, they waited to see if users would be attracted to WeChat and then promote it themselves.

If users weren’t willing to do this, whatever marketing they did would be meaningless. Although it took more time, it meant that the product was healthy when it really started to g

Underneath this transformation lay several key building blocks: mobile-first internet users, WeChat’s role as the national super-app, and mobile payments that transformed every smartphone into a digital wallet.

In the span of two years, WeChat went from a no-name app to a powerhouse of messaging, media, marketing, and gaming. But Tencent wanted even more. It already monopolized users’ digital lives, but it wanted to extend that functionality beyond the smartphone. Over the ensuing five years, Tencent painstakingly built WeChat into the world’s first super