Tencent eyes new apps to fend off rivals, offset slower growth in WeChat and QQ

This article is co-written by Iris Deng.

Chinese tech giant Tencent has unveiled several new social networking apps, ramping up efforts to retain user attention amid increasing competition from rivals and slowing growth of its flagship WeChat super app.

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The new social networking apps, with features such as videos, online communities, and ecommerce, will compete against established rivals like Bytedance and Kuaishou, which dominate China’s short-video market, as well as a crop of internet giants that are expanding into social networks.

The new Maohu video app is essentially a dating platform that gives users the ability to choose beautifying filters or overlay cartoon masks when streaming videos to friends or people nearby.

Qingliao, meaning “light chat” in Chinese, is similar to China’s biggest dating app Tanan. Tencent’s version allows users to chat if they exchange a heart emoji with each other.

The third new product is a networking app called Youji, meaning life recording. It combines social media and online community features, allowing users to post updates on daily events or browse content based on their interests.

Separately, Chinese media reported that Tencent has another social media product in its pipeline – a content sharing and social ecommerce site similar to Weibo’s Oasis and Xiaohongshu. Meanwhile, it is also testing Friends, a private social app that requires personal credentials including a diploma or a company letter for user verification.

Tencent declined to comment on its strategy for the new apps.

Tencent, whose WeChat and QQ messaging apps have 1.2 billion and 731 million monthly active users respectively, is seeing its dominance challenged by rivals such as Alibaba, Sina, Bytedance, and JD.com, which have all expanded into the social network sector since the beginning of the year.

Alibaba is the parent company of the South China Morning Post.

“WeChat and QQ are like huge ships […] too big to change course to catch a new trend before others,” said Matthew Brennan, managing director of consulting firm China Channel.

WeChat and QQ both saw quarter-on-quarter declines in monthly active users in September, while, in the same month, Chinese netizens spent 42% of their online time using Tencent apps, down 4.2% from the same month last year, according to a report from Chinese data analytics firm Quest Mobile.

“Compared to this time last year, Tencent has already seen its piece of the social app usage time pie shrink while that of competitors like Bytedance has increased,” said Mark Natkin, managing director of Beijing-based Marbridge Consulting. “Tencent is savvy enough not to put all of its eggs in just one or two baskets.”