This period was also the peak era of China copying foreign technology startups and bringing them to China. Kik also had features that were very new at the time, including tracking when a message was sent, delivered, read, and when someone was typing, turning texting into real-time conversations. It’s hard to remember, but there was a time when you had to pay for text messages. The value proposition of Kik was pretty simple: free text messaging. Within 15 days, the app had been downloaded over 1 million times by users across the world. Then, on October 19, 2010, Kik Messenger was released on Android, iPhone, and Blackberry. By March 2008, it was China’s most popular email product.īut by 2010, Allen was beginning to get bored at Tencent. By 2008, his team had launched a completely revamped version of the QQ Mailbox that supported 2G attachments leading to it gaining in popularity. This was during a period where Tencent was fiercely competing with Microsoft’s MSN and Hotmail to win email in China and the acquisition was seen as a way to strengthen Tencent’s existing QQ Mail offering.Īfter moving over to Tencent in 2005, Allen was made the head of Tencent’s Guangzhou R&D center and eventually the head of QQ Mail. Either way, Allen Zhang wound up at Tencent. In March 2005, Boda was bought by Tencent or Boda sold Foxmail’s assets to Tencent, details are fuzzy. Zhang became a Corporate VP at Boda, in charge of technology development.īy 2005, Foxmail has stalled out within Boda with users disappointed at the lack of updates coming from the product. In 2000, Boda China, an internet services company, acquired Foxmail for ~$1,500,000. It gained about 5 million users which, in 1997, gave it a 33% market share in China. In 1994, WeChat’s eventual creator, Zhāng Xiǎolóng (English name: Allen Zhang), finished his master’s degree in ‘telecommunications engineering’ at Huazhong University of Science and Technology.īy 1997, at 28-years old, Zhang as a lone software engineer created one of China’s earliest internet companies, Foxmail, which became China’s #1 free internet client. For example, if you are using WeChat outside of China and don’t have a Chinese bank account, a lot of features are not available to you. *Note… I use Weixin as WeChat throughout this post, but it’s worth noting there is some difference. (If you’ve ever opened the WeChat app, you’ve seen this image)
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |