Less than two weeks after Taobao trialled direct use of WeChat Pay on the platform, Alibaba’s DingTalk has now also incorporated WeChat. With the new update, you can join a DingTalk meeting without leaving WeChat or even downloading DingTalk. Just share your meeting link with your WeChat friend, and they’ll be able to join the meeting with a simplified interface within WeChat, including all essential functions such as mute/unmute, enabling the camera, inviting friends or checking members.
On Weibo, China’s Twitter-equivalent, the topic “You can join DingTalk meeting on WeChat” (#微信上能用钉钉开会了#) shot to number 6 on the Hot Search list with 52.24 million views. Some netizens feel that without the need to download means great convenience, especially when having meetings with clients. However, others are concerned that integrating DingTalk with WeChat can mean switching off after work becomes more difficult.
For Alibaba’s DingTalk, being able to tap into WeChat’s large user base means great potential. According to Tencent’s data, in Q3 2023, monthly active users of WeChat reached 1.34 billion, increasing 2% year-on-year. At the same time, the convenience brought by the update makes DingTalk more flexible and hence competitive as a workplace app. On the other hand, WeChat can leverage DingTalk’s over 700 million users, including 25 million enterprises, schools and other organisations, making it a win-win situation for both parties.
Alibaba and Tencent are tearing down barriers between them at a rapid pace. Since the request from the authorities in 2021, Alibaba started incorporating WeChat Pay into many of the company’s services such as Ele.me and Youku. Earlier this year, Alibaba’s second-hand marketplace Xianyu also appeared on WeChat as a Mini Program. This is partly due to official policy, as well as platforms realising future growth is in connecting, since they started to see bottlenecks in growing their user base after building barriers between them.
