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Jack Ma 'threatens to take away bonus' from staff who fail to promote messaging app
Alibaba Group chairman wants employees to raise profile of smartphone messaging application Laiwang
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Alibaba Group chairman Jack Ma Yun has stepped up the company's uphill battle against internet powerhouse Tencent by asking each employee to collect at least 100 external contacts by the end of November on Laiwang, its little-known smartphone messaging application, China's Caijing Magazine reported.
Ma made the comments on Sunday in an internal memo, calling on employees to raise the profile of Laiwang to compete against Tencent's extremely popular Wechat, and implying that those who did not hit the target would lose their bonus.
“I consider those who fail to reach the 100 mark as automatically giving up their bonus,” Ma allegedly wrote.
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Laiwang, launched at the end of last year, offers similar text and voice chat features to Wechat. It allows users to log in using their Taobao account.
However reactions to Laiwang have been disappointing since its launch, drawing only one million users, said a Wall Street Journal report. Wechat claims to have more than 400 million users, according to a People’s Daily report published in August.
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