New | WeChat gets Bill Gates talking too
Gates is the latest celebrity to adopt China’s dominant social networking tool to reach out to fans, as Facebook and Twitter remain blocked on the mainland
WeChat, the Chinese social media tool that allows 846 million customers do everything from reading news to paying utilities bills to hailing a cab, has a new user: Bill Gates.
The billionaire philanthropist, whose Microsoft Corp. dominated and defined the era of personal desktop computing, appeared in a 30-second WeChat video on Saturday posted on the account gatesnotes.
With a nihao greeting, and a sentence in Mandarin welcoming fans to his WeChat account, Gates said in English that the account is his personal blog, where he will share thoughts about the people he meets, the books he’s reading and his learnings.
Gates is the latest celebrity to be taking to China’s dominant social networking tool to reach out to fans, as services like Facebook and Twitter remain blocked by China’s censors.
WeChat, released in 2011 by online gaming company Tencent Holdings Inc as an instant chat service, has evolved into China’s dominant phone-based utility and social networking tool, where users can do everything from electronic payments to real-time map searches to investments.
Hollywood actress Maggie Q, pop star Selena Gomez and the Backstreet Boys also operate WeChat accounts.