Advertisement
WeChat
Tech

Channels, WeChat’s answer to short video app Douyin, tests live-streaming function

  • WeChat has reportedly begun testing live-streaming on its short video feature Channels with a select group of content creators
  • Tencent’s do-everything app has a huge user base in China, but it is a relatively late entrant to short video and live-streaming e-commerce

Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
0
WeChat has an enormous user base in China, reporting 1.2 billion monthly active users in June. Photo: Bloomberg
Iris Deng
Tencent Holdings’ do-everything app WeChat has reportedly begun testing live-streaming on its short video feature Channels with a select group of content creators, as it increasingly competes with popular short video apps Douyin and Kuaishou in the short video and live-streaming e-commerce space.

Starting last week, a small group of Channels users was able to access the live-streaming function in beta mode, Chinese media outlet Jiemian reported last Friday. Jiemian’s test of the feature showed that viewers were able to watch live streams while using other WeChat services. They could also like and comment on the live streams, and share them via chat messages and WeChat’s social media feed, Moments.

WeChat did not immediately respond to queries regarding the beta test of the Channels live-streaming feature.

Channels is the short video section in WeChat, which the app first began beta-testing in late January. By July, less than six months after its launch, “father of WeChat” Allen Zhang said the feature had already accumulated 200 million users. However, he did not specify whether these were daily active users or monthly active users.

Unlike Douyin and Kuaishou, which are apps dedicated to short videos, Channels runs within WeChat alongside many other features from messaging and games to mobile payments. The section features a feed of videos selected based on popularity as well as recommendations from users’ WeChat friends and content creators they follow.

The time limit for videos is one minute, although with the latest update, certain users are able to post videos up to 30 minutes long.

Advertisement