Techbuzz China By Pandaily

In episode 35 of TechBuzz China, co-hosts Ying-Ying Lu and Rui Ma talk about competitors to the reigning Chinese social media champion, WeChat. Specifically, they focus on three apps that all decided to launch on Tuesday, January 15, 2019, two weeks before Chinese New Year: Bytedance’s Duoshan, Wang Xin’s self-proclaimed “anti-WeChat” Toilet, and Bullet Messenger 2.0. Following their releases, WeChat promptly blocked links to all three. Our co-hosts ask: Does WeChat have a reason to be scared? Why was it so defensive? Is there truly a chance for any of these companies to topple Allen Zhang’s miraculous creation? And if so, how would that come about? Rui and Ying-Ying begin by giving their perspective on WeChat’s two main weaknesses. The first is its decreasing representation of young users, specifically, teenagers — a challenge that many other social networks that have been around for a while, including Facebook, also face. The second is the emergence of WeChat Moments as a battleground for user time. This de