WeChat is Watching You: Quick Takeaways From WeChat's 2019 Stats Review
It would be an understatement to say that life without WeChat in China would be a hell of a lot more inconvenient – for many of us it has replaced our wallet, allows us to keep up with friends and family, and more or less necessitates opening your browser with its efficient ecosystem of travel, tickets, and utility functions.
It's no wonder then that in return, WeChat is gifted with mountains of data pertaining to our relationships, lifestyle, and shopping habits. Late last week, WeChat and its mother company Tencent, released some of their key findings back to the public during their annual anniversary event in Guangzhou, holding a mirror to our digital lives like the shop-happy slaves that we are. Ok, perhaps that's a bit much but you get the idea.
Unlike other attention-seeking digital gurus like bizarro dad dancer Elon Musk, Baidu's Robin Li (plus his infamous bottle of water sidekick), and Michael Jackson wannabe Jack Ma, WeChat founder Allen Zhang tends to avoid the spotlight, and didn't even bother showing up to his own meeting. Instead, he sent a pre-recorded video in which he explained, "participating in various meetings can be a waste of time. We need to talk with our products." So talk about his products we shall.
The latest report summarizes data up until September of 2019. Below are some of the biggest takeaways:
Usage
- WeChat attracts over 300 million daily users, with an estimated 1.151 billion active monthly users.
- The number of mini-programs used per person increased by 98 percent from last year.
- The peak time usage for WeChat official accounts is 9pm, and for mini-games it's 8pm. Peak time general usage (messaging, browsing Moments etc.) are during the hours preceding lunch and after-work hours.
- The top WeChat Moments "check-in" cities in China are Guangzhou, Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Chengdu. Internationally, the top five foreign cities are Seoul, Osaka, Jeju, Bangkok, and Singapore.
- In 2019, the number of average daily cross-border payments (WeChat Pay transactions made overseas) increased by 76 percent.
- The average steps taken per WeChat user per day (as recorded by WeRun) was 6,932 steps.
Favorites
- The "facepalm" emoji remained China users' favorite emoji, followed by "grin," "chuckle," "thumbs up," and the "rose."
- The top search words of 2019 were "black hole," following NASA first successfully capturing an image of one, and "Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral," after a fire ravaged the world-famous building. Coincidentally, both events occurred in April.
WeChat Pay
- The total transactions generated via Mini-Program surpassed RMB 800 billion, a 160 percent increase on the year prior.
- WeChat has directly and indirectly created 26.1 million jobs, although how WeChat arrived at this figure, and what exactly it means, is not clear.
- 79.4 percent of outlets in China use WeChat Pay.
- Females receive 58 percent of all hongbao, while males received 16 percent fewer at 42 percent.
- On weekends, the number of times WeChat-based food delivery mini-programs are used increases by 93 percent.
Good news for the social butterflies among you
Finally, one of WeChat’s newest features is not really a new feature at all: they're simply planning to ease off the 5,000 friend limit per user restriction, though by how much they'll increase the cap is currently unknown – the system is currently in beta testing. Because what we really need in life are more shallow, transactional, digital-only relationships.
READ: China's SIM Card Registration Laws Among the World's Strictest
Images: s-ge.com, pandaily.com
