As you know, I am testing WeChat at the moment. One of its features I am curious about is the WeChat shake functionality.
What value can this give to the user and is there a business case?
I will discuss this in this article.
What is WeChat shake?
When this feature is selected, just shake your phone. You will be connected to someone else in the world who is shaking his/her phone at the same time. Then you can choose to ignore or respond to this user.
The value
WeChat shake can be a great way to meet new people while using your phone. This can help user feel less lonely.
But is there also a commercial use case?
duplicating the Chinese digital ecosystem in Europe
In China WeChat shake is very popular and not only because it helps against loneliness.
There is also a commercial benefit. In shops where the WeChat shake-logo is present, customers with the WeChat app can shake their phone and then get the offers/coupons from this store on their phone. This is already present and used a lot in far away China, but also will be implemented in Europe.
It seems this feature of WeChat is based on iBeacon-solution, but I am not sure yet, because recent online documentation is scarce on this part. So this will be a future research project.
Let’s see how this implementation of WeChat shake will continue in Europe and if the Chinese tourists will use it.
To be continued ….