WeChat blocks sharing of short videos from a Baidu app
Tencent’s super app allows the company to battle rivals
China’s Great Firewall blocks a lot of foreign sites. But inside China, sites and apps are blocking each other too.
Users found that their WeChat contacts cannot see links they shared from Haokan -- a short video app made by Baidu, according to Chinese media reports.
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WeChat, the app that does everything
Alibaba’s Taobao faces the same ban from WeChat when users want to share an item with their WeChat friends. Taobao has also been trying to make it easier: After you click “Share to WeChat”, it generates a link for the item you want to share, automatically copies the link, and opens WeChat for you -- so that you can then select a chat window, paste the link and send. It’s not nearly as slick as how sharing normally works, but it’s one way around it.
(Abacus is a unit of the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba.)
But WeChat is not the only one. While China’s tech giants each have their specialties, as they expand they’re encroaching on each other’s turf -- a natural consequence of their ambition to do everything, according to the 2018 China Internet Report.
In 2013, Alibaba banned its sellers from using WeChat, citing too many promotional WeChat messages. That started a battle between the two giants, and in 2015 WeChat forced Alipay off its platform during Chinese New Year, when millions of users were using the two services to send red packets.
Results of that war remains till today -- you can’t use Alipay in WeChat and can’t pay with WeChat Pay on Taobao.
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For more insights into China tech, sign up for our tech newsletters, subscribe to our Inside China Tech podcast, and download the comprehensive 2019 China Internet Report. Also roam China Tech City, an award-winning interactive digital map at our sister site Abacus.
For more insights into China tech, sign up for our tech newsletters, subscribe to our Inside China Tech podcast, and download the comprehensive 2019 China Internet Report. Also roam China Tech City, an award-winning interactive digital map at our sister site Abacus.