5 things Facebook will need to do to become more like WeChat

Mark Zuckerberg says he wished he had listened to advice about learning from WeChat years ago. It comes after the Facebook CEO published a grand plan outlining where the social network is heading next — a direction that many point out is similar to what WeChat has been doing.

But what would it take for Facebook to actually become more like WeChat? Let’s take a look:

Private communication

It’s fair to say that WeChat resembles more of a living room than a town square – a reference Zuckerberg used for Facebook in his announcement.

WeChat is based on private messaging instead of real-name profiles. WeChat accounts of individuals are not public. That means unlike on Facebook, you can’t search for someone’s name on WeChat to find their accounts.

Photo credit: Tech in Asia

Instead, people are only searchable if you know their WeChat ID (which is usually a string of random or personalized numbers and characters), QQ ID, or phone number. To do that, you’ll probably have at least some sort of connection with the person you want to get in touch with. Users can also opt out from being searchable by those numbers.

Just like Facebook, WeChat users can adjust the privacy settings of their posts. But even if they chose public, only the content of that post can be viewed by outsiders. The comments and likes are only viewable by your contacts. It’s probably why WeChat named the section Pengyouquan, meaning “friends’ circle” in Chinese.

Newsfeed vs subscription box

Facebook shows advertisements on users’ news feed, but there’s a big difference with how WeChat does it. While WeChat has a social feed called Moments where you can see updates from friends, it promises to dump only two ads each day.

On WeChat, you can also see more news updates from businesses – but only those you’ve subscribed to. Their posts live inside a subscription box that sits among your chat windows. It contains all the articles from public accounts you’ve subscribed to, arranged chronologically.

One of WeChat’s recent updates did include a news feed called “Top Stories,” but it’s tucked away on its own in the Discovery page. So if you don’t like it, you can just avoid opening it.

Mobile payment

In China, hundreds of millions of people use WeChat to pay for bills and groceries, hail a cab, order food, and send each other digital red envelopes or packets. It’s one of the reasons why users are hooked on the app.

On WeChat, digital payments are made via QR codes: users can scan a merchant’s code with their phones, or let the seller scan their own individual code. It’s a simple method that has made mobile payment extremely popular in China. It’s estimated that over 80 percent of mobile phone users in China have used digital payments, compared with less than a third in the US.

Zuckerberg has said Facebook is working to add digital payments. But unlike in China where WeChat is already one of two dominant players, competition is tough in the US. Right now, many Americans are using the likes of Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Pay.

Mini programs

Some have compared WeChat to a Swiss army knife – you can do almost everything on the app. A big part of that is down to mini programs, or lightweight apps that run inside the bigger app of WeChat.

Overall philosophy