TikTok’s Chinese version gets WeChat-style friend-finding function in social networking push, challenging Tencent
- ByteDance’s Douyin now lets users shake their phones to find users nearby, a feature that helped rival Tencent grow WeChat into China’s most-used super app
- The Beijing-based company has been looking for ways to expand the domestic version of TikTok beyond short videos to become a social and lifestyle platform
Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok developed by Beijing-based ByteDance, launched a location-based social feature on Monday that allows users to find people nearby by shaking their phones, replicating a feature almost identical to one that has long existed in Tencent Holdings’ WeChat in a move widely seen as a challenge to the latter’s dominance in social networking.
The feature called dou yi dou, which roughly translates as “shake it”, allows users to shake their phones and see others doing the same nearby, then add each other to their friends lists. It works similarly to WeChat’s yao yi yao, which helped popularise the super app in its early days by making it easy to add new contacts.
WeChat now has about 1.2 billion active monthly users, and it is hard to find a smartphone in China without it installed. By comparison, Douyin had 600 million daily active users as of last August.
To encourage people to try the new feature, Douyin introduced a five-day campaign allowing users to win prizes such as KFC coupons after shaking their phones and befriending others.