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Chinese delivery giant Meituan moves to expand live-streaming reach with new WeChat mini-program
- Meituan’s new WeChat mini-program MLive features live-streams by merchants including hair salons, dental clinics and beauty parlours
- The on-demand giant also offers live-streaming on its own apps, but WeChat has almost three times as many users
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Minghe Huin Beijing
About a month after Meituan, China’s largest on-demand app, introduced a new live-streaming toolkit for private educational institutions, it has moved to reach an even bigger audience by launching a mini-program on Tencent Holdings’ ubiquitous app WeChat.
WeChat, a do-everything app that allows users to find a hotel, pay bills, message friends, order food and much more, had over 1.2 billion users worldwide as of the end of June, almost three times the 450.5 million annual transacting users Beijing-based Meituan reported in its annual report for last year.
While it is primarily known as a food delivery company, Meituan has been broadening its offerings in recent months, giving customers the option to order everything from Huawei phones and Sephora beauty products to books on its app.
Based on a check by the Post on Monday, Meituan’s new WeChat mini-program MLive features merchants including hair salons, dental clinics, beauty parlours, dance studios and educational institutions already selling their services through live-streams on the company‘s eponymous app Meituan as well as another on-demand service app it operates, Dianping.
Users can watch the live-streams and purchase products and services on the WeChat mini-program just as they can on Meituan and Dianping. They can also set reminders for live streams and rewatch past broadcasts through both the WeChat mini-program and Meituan’s apps.
Meituan declined to comment for this story.
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