{"title":"The path to WeChat: How Tencent’s culture shaped the most popular Chinese app, 1998–2011","authors":"G. Negro, G. Balbi, Paolo Bory","doi":"10.1177/1742766520923008","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article contributes to the literature on WeChat, providing a historical perspective on the long-lasting culture of its mother company, Tencent. Through a corpus of primary and secondary sources, the article retraces four constitutive choices which characterized Tencent’s culture from 1998, when the company was founded, to 2011, when the first version of WeChat was launched. We argue that Tencent’s market strategy has always been based on four principles: mobility, media convergence, gaming/youth culture and Sinicization. The article concludes by highlighting that these constitutive choices paved the way to the creation of WeChat, thus contributing to its current success.","PeriodicalId":45157,"journal":{"name":"Global Media and Communication","volume":"16 1","pages":"208 - 226"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2020-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1742766520923008","citationCount":"14","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Global Media and Communication","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1742766520923008","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 14
Abstract
This article contributes to the literature on WeChat, providing a historical perspective on the long-lasting culture of its mother company, Tencent. Through a corpus of primary and secondary sources, the article retraces four constitutive choices which characterized Tencent’s culture from 1998, when the company was founded, to 2011, when the first version of WeChat was launched. We argue that Tencent’s market strategy has always been based on four principles: mobility, media convergence, gaming/youth culture and Sinicization. The article concludes by highlighting that these constitutive choices paved the way to the creation of WeChat, thus contributing to its current success.
期刊介绍：
Global Media and Communication is an international peer-reviewed journal launched in April 2005 as a key forum for articulating critical debates and developments in the continuously changing global media and communications environment. As a pioneering platform for the exchange of ideas and multiple perspectives, the journal addresses fresh and contentious research agendas and promotes an academic dialogue that is fully transnational and transdisciplinary in its scope. With a network of ten regional editors around the world, the journal offers a global source of material on international media and cultural processes. Special features include interviews, reviews of recent media developments and digests of policy documents and data reports from a variety of countries.
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