a16z on Wechat's China mobile first
Known in Chinese as Weixin (微信) -- "micro letter" -- WeChat is first and foremost a messaging app for sending text, voice, and photos to friends and family. It was launched just 4 years ago by Chinese investment holding company Tencent, one of the largest internet companies in the world. As of earlier this year, WeChat had 549 million monthly active users (MAUs) among over one billion registered users, almost all of them in Asia. To put that in context: That's only 150M MAUs fewer than Facebook Messenger, almost 3x the MAUs of Japan's Line, and 10x the MAUs of Korea's Kakao.