Chinese tech giants Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent have built successful ecosystems that allow them to earn in different directions. Trends figured out what services they offer users and companies
Tencent Ecosystem
In 2011, the Chinese telecom company Tencent launched the WeChat messenger with the option to send photos and short audio recordings. WeChat was originally created specifically for smartphones. Two years later, audio and video calls, as well as conference calls, appeared on the platform. At the competitor – WhatsApp – these options were added only in 2016. In 2017, the developers proposed an app-within-app model, which allowed media and advertisers to use the platform for their needs.
WeChat now has “official accounts” that are distinguished by the functionality of full-fledged applications, for example, the ability to make purchases and pay for reservations. As a result, many companies simply stopped creating their own services and started organizing built-in applications in WeChat. At the same time, “mini-programs” can not even be downloaded to a smartphone, and WeChat shows services “nearby”.
The company implemented the payment option in WeChat thanks to the WePay payment system. This allows companies to create full-fledged online stores within the service. The company can also generate a QR code for its business card, which others can then scan to add it to their friends list. The seller can attach QR codes to their products, which buyers will scan to pay for goods within the ecosystem. Moreover, it can even be a simple sticker on a physical product in a store.
The WeChat ecosystem currently includes a range of products. It offers users instant messaging, social networking, entertainment, payments, shopping, third-party services, government services, and smart home features.
In addition to built-in applications, WeChat also has native products. For example, Wechat Work or WeCom is a whole ecosystem of tools for a company. It includes chats, video conferencing, live streaming, calendar, workspace, WeDoc, WeDisk, attendance, reports, meetings, remote technical support and so on.
So, in WeDoc, you can create .doc files or tables, edit them together, drop a link to the selected section of the document. In the calendar, you can create To-Do lists and synchronize it with the built-in calendar on your smartphone. WeDrive is a cloud file storage similar to Google Drive. 100 GB of storage is free for the organization. WeCom also includes a built-in email client, and the company gives you a domain for a year if you specify a new domain instead of using an existing one.
Finally, for WeCom, you can set up a payment account by linking it to a bank account in order to transfer money to both company employees and regular WeChat users.
WeChat’s app store-like mini app ecosystem attracted over 450 million daily active users in 2021, up 12,5% from 2020. At the same time, users spend 32% more time on such applications every day compared to 2020.
Alibaba Ecosystem
Since its founding in 1999, Alibaba has grown into the largest retail company in the world in terms of gross value of goods. The ecosystem of the group also consists of a wholesale business segment, international e-commerce platforms outside of China (for example, Lazada in Southeast Asia, Daraz in South Asia, and Trendyol in Turkey) and domestically (T-Mall, Taobao), cloud computing business , digital media, entertainment and others. Alibaba is integrating its own companies into marketplaces. For example, Alibaba Health sells medical products through T-Mall. Direct pharmaceutical sales at T-Mall generate 87% of the company’s revenue. The most important step in the development of the Alibaba ecosystem was the creation of the Alipay payment system, which now allows you to pay not only for purchases on the group’s sites, but also for utility bills, Internet bills, and so on.
Alimama is the Alibaba Group’s monetization platform that offers marketing tools to merchants and brands across the Alibaba ecosystem, as well as media services on its own and third-party sites. Merchants can choose from a variety of marketing options, such as keyword search rankings, social media marketing targeted to specific consumer groups, or customized campaigns.
Alibaba’s commercial segment also includes many platforms and services. Here are the main ones:
- Ele.me is a shipping platform that Alibaba acquired from Baidu in 2018. It allows consumers to order food and drinks, groceries, consumer goods, flowers and pharmaceuticals. It is the second largest food delivery platform in China behind dominant player Meituan.
- Koubei is a restaurant and local service guide platform founded by Alibaba in 2017. Merchants can use marketing tools to promote their stores and services and business intelligence tools. Consumers can use the platform to find restaurants and local services.
- Fliggy is an online travel booking platform launched by Alibaba in 2014 that offers all-inclusive booking (such as transportation tickets, accommodation, and car rental) and package services (tours and excursions to local attractions).
- Idle Fish is a consumer (C2°C) marketplace launched in 2014 for niche products, where you can find a variety of used, remanufactured, refurbished and rental items.
- Taobao Live is a service launched in 2016 that allows merchants and bloggers to launch live streams to promote their products and interact with consumers.
- Taobao Short Video is a service launched in 2017 that allows merchants and social media bloggers to create short videos to promote their products.
AliExpress is also part of the Alibaba Group and is one of the leading online e-commerce marketplaces in the world. It offers automatic translation in 18 languages, conversion to currencies of 51 countries, and supports 38 local payment channels for the security of transaction payments. The site has its own online university that offers learning resources for new sellers.
Consumer Services contributed 5% of Alibaba’s total revenue in fiscal 2021.
Baidu Ecosystem
Baidu started by building a search engine and then introduced Taobao’s competitor, Baidu’s You’A trading platform. The company then teamed up with Wanda and Tencent to create a common e-commerce platform. Today, the Baidu ecosystem includes a search engine, email, maps, an online encyclopedia, cloud storage, and mobile applications. The company occupies over 70% of the Chinese search engine market share, its search engine is used by more than 80% of users.
The Baidu ecosystem has about 70 subsites. Here are the most popular ones:
- Baidu Baike is an online encyclopedia similar to Wikipedia that caters to a Chinese audience. It was founded in 2006. Nearly 60% of the traffic generated on Baike is referral traffic coming directly from Baidu and sister sites. Baidu Baike is also one of the most visited websites in China.
- Baidu Wenku is an online library where users can upload and download books, documents, and articles in all formats. It hosts both free content and paid files. Baidu Wenku offers publishers tools to promote content that appears at the top of Baidu’s SERPs as regular search results.
- Baidu Zhidao is a Q&A platform similar to Yahoo Answer or Quora. It was launched in November 2005 and has nearly 700 million monthly visitors. Like Baidu Wenku content, Baidu Zhidao Q&A ranks quite high in Baidu’s SERPs. There are two types of accounts on the service: personal accounts and brand accounts, which offer companies more tools to promote themselves.
- Baidu Tieba is a forum platform that was launched in 2003 and is one of the most popular online communication platforms in China. As of June 2021, the app had over 23 million communities. Platform users can post text, images or videos on various topics. Thus, Baidu Tieba acts as the Chinese analogue of Reddit. Most of the traffic (40%) on Tieba comes directly from Baidu search.
- Baidu Baijiahao is a news aggregator-style platform launched in 2016. In 2021, it had over 4,2 million publishers. Baijiahao offers different types of business accounts for companies and media, each with different promotion tools.