Release of WeChat

WeChat is a Chinese messaging, social media and mobile payment application developed by Tencent, created by a team led by Allen Zhang, and first launched under the Chinese name Weixin. It began as a simple chat app with voice messages and quickly grew, adding features such as Moments, a social feed, public accounts for businesses, and WeChat Pay. Over time it became a super-app, used for almost everything in daily life in China, from paying bills, hailing taxis, booking tickets, and shopping to accessing government services, through the mini-programs inside it. It has well over a billion monthly users, and is also used by Chinese communities abroad, although it has been criticised for censorship and surveillance.

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