Who are the social media giants in China?
Compared to a few major players dominating the western market, China has a more dynamic, diverse, and competitive social media landscape, despite under speech censorship, with platforms rising and falling on a faster timescale. Thanks to its versatile functionality, Tencent’s WeChat has long been the most popular social networking space. It is a super version of Facebook with ride-hailing, food delivery, mobile payment, and other services all in one app. Owing to its huge userbase, marketing and e-commerce have been thriving on WeChat.When it comes to microblogging, Chinese users have their local version of Twitter - Sina Weibo, with 140 to two thousand Chinese characters allowing in one post. It has been used extensively as a space for free-speech with a significant amount of online users. Other prominent Chinese social media platforms include: Youku Tudou (equivalent of YouTube), Douyin (aka TikTok), Baidu Tieba (a search engine forum), Zhihu (the Quora of China), Xiaohongshu (a cross-border e-commerce community), Meitu (the Chinese alternative to Instagram), and Meituan-Dianping (the Chinese Yelp and Groupon).
