Sociality, Circulation, Transaction

WeChat's Infrastructural Affordances

Bibliographic Data

ID13100339
Authorsde Seta (corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume6
Issue2
Pages65-65
Publication date2020-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueVerge Studies in Global Asias (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2373-5058 • E-ISSN: 2373-5066
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.5749/vergstudglobasia.6.2.0065
OpenAlexW3049452675
LanguageEN
Citations received6

65 Interface Gabriele de Seta Sociality, Circulation, Transaction: WeChat's Infrastructural Affordances 6 Two White Speech Bubbles on a Green Background Installing this app wasn't different from any other—­ a light tap on the screen from the store, a download bar filling up, a new icon popping up on the home screen. I imagine that for millions of Chinese users, this process felt similarly mundane. A new app by Tencent; an alternative to iMessage, QQ, and SMS; a messaging service designed for smartphones. Something to give a try in case it offered a decent user experience and a convenient way to communicate. At least for me, installing WeChat came with a tiny sliver of lazy resistance. Living in Hong Kong, I had access to Facebook; some of my local contacts preferred apps like LINE or WhatsApp; I already used QQ and Sina Weibo's private messaging function to keep in touch with most of my Chinese friends. I was skeptical about the need for an additional piece of software with its trail of login details, option menus, notifications, and updates. But in early 2013, my QQ contacts, one after the other, started asking me if I had WeChat. Sometimes it was because they wanted to continue conversations via their mobile phones, when they had no access to QQ; other times, it was because a chat group I belonged to had moved to WeChat. Some friends had been checking their QQ less often; others wanted to share content from their smartphones instead of a computer. Once peer pressure overcame my technological inertia, I caved in and launched the newly installed application. All that I needed to do was type in my QQ login details and import my contact list. I felt a pleasing rush of coevalness when I could finally make contact with each one of my friends and tell them "I have WeChat now, add me." I wasn't actively refusing to catch up with the times. Tencent had 66 Interface launched WeChat only a couple of years before, and it took a while for the app to take off. WeChat was also not structurally different from any of the many messaging apps I had tried up to then—­ its logo, two white speech bubbles on a green background, similarly unoriginal. In the beginning , my adoption of WeChat did not feel momentous or life changing. But as of mid-­ 2013, the app was growing exponentially, experiencing a massive influx of users that brought it to 300 million monthly active users (MAU) by the end of the year. In the span of a few months, I witnessed this rapid uptake reorient how Chinese internet users socialized online. Most of my friends pivoted toward using WeChat for everyday messaging; new acquaintances began asking for my WeChat ID as their first choice to remain in contact, and some classmates started popping up in the People Nearby search function. By the time I started my fieldwork in China in early 2014, WeChat had become the most central app on my interviewees' smartphones, displacing foreign apps like LINE and WhatsApp and overtaking Chinese alternatives like Mi Message and Tencent QQ. Some acquaintances decided to upgrade their mobile phones and get more powerful smartphones, just to be able to run WeChat smoothly. A popular topic of discussion among friends was the looming "death" of microblogging service Sina Weibo, which had become "boring" and "lifeless" compared to Tencent's new application. My WeChat contact list rapidly accumulated more than a hundred contacts, and I was easily convinced to register my mobile phone number in the app security details to make sure I wouldn't lose my account. In technical terms, I was locked in, just like other users around me. This article focuses on WeChat, which remains China's most iconic mobile application. After I offer a short history of WeChat's development and growth, I review in the next section popular narratives of Tencent's messaging app—­ranging from its role as an exemplar of Chinese innovation to its pioneering embrace of a centralized platform model. I then engage with recent analyses that identify in WeChat traits typical of digital and social infrastructure. Throughout the

Affordance · Computer security · Database transaction · Human–computer interaction · Installation · Internet privacy · Login · Sociality · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Smart Cities and Technologies · Social Media and Politics

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