Can Tencent crack US market after Facebook-Whatsapp deal?

By Cai Muyuan (chinadaily.com.cn) Updated: 2014-02-20 17:57

Kelly Turketo, an Australian who has been living in Beijing for almost a year, said she prefers WeChat over Whatsapp. "I guess Whatsapp and WeChat are similar except WeChat has awesome animations. My Aussie girlfriend just downloaded it and she loves the animations. Now she's always sending them to me."

George Dufournier, an event planner who works with mostly teens in Miami and currently lives in Beijing, said he likes WeChat. "It's a great combination of social networks and instant messages", "I use Facebook mostly back in the US because it's easier to create events and pages so people can confirm if they are coming to an event or not. People in the US use Whatsapp when they have friends overseas. I didn't use it often back home because my mobile-phone plan offered me unlimited texts facility."

"I can definitely see WeChat's potential in the US market, but it might take time for it to gain popularity", he said.

Lu Gang, the founder of Technode.com, the official partner of TechCrunch in China, said he hopes to see WeChat expand its presence in global market but expresses concerns.

"It has a great potential if it pushes harder. However, out of the 100 million overseas users it has, we don't know how many are living in China. It will be even more difficult for WeChat to compete with Whatsapp now since Facebook is backing it", Lu said.

According to Wired, Facebook admitted on a recent earnings call that teenagers are spending less time on its service, and a tool like WhatsApp is a way to attract the much sought-after demography.

The service now spans 450 million monthly users, and about 70 percent of them are active on any given day, Facebook said.