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Chinese WeChat: A better platform for network analysis

“Can I add you on Wechat?”

If you meet someone new, “Can I add you on Wechat” has become a part of greeting conversation in Chinese people’s daily life. Wechat, as an mobile app, now plays a crucial and irreplaceable part in Chinese network. It integrates functions of phone, massage, voice massage, and allows you to share photo, video, articles to your friend circle so they will appear on your friend’s news feed. Unlike any other social network such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc., Wechat network is built on actual relationship instead of interest. This is also the reason why Wechat can better assembly  user’s real social network compare to that of other social media. All the Wechat contacts are two-way relationships that built upon actual acquaintance between two people. This kind of contacts are more reliable and realistic when we want to analysis individual’s network structure.  

By May 2016, Wechat has about 762 million monthly active users both inside and outside of China. One reason that makes Wechat so attractive is related to the trustworthy environment it created for users. Every posts are all ‘friend-only’ which means only people within your contact group are able to view your post. Users are not able to add or follow any people out of their own interests, all friend adding request must be confirmed by both users.This makes users feel safe reveal themselves in Wechat because everyone can see their post is their actual friend or acquaintance. Users can also comment or like their friend’s post like they do on Facebook, but what’s different is that you can only view comments from common friend between user and people who post. For example, your friend A post a photo in his friend circle, both B and C comments his photo. However, you will not be able to see B and C’s comments unless you are also friend with them. If you are friend with B but not C, then only B’s comments will show on your end. This unique feature of Wechat eliminates the formation of ‘tie’ that is one direction only based on one people’s interest. It also prevents user from being wechat friend without knowing each other in real life. However, users can add friend through their current friend’s recommendation. Your friend can recommend their friend to you, and you can send a adding request to him/her. After your friend request being confirmed, you will gain a new contact which in other word means a tie has formed under the strong triadic closure property.

Using Wechat as a tool to analysis and graph out individuals network is on average highly precise and reliable. Even users themselves can easily identify their different group of close friends and local bridges in their friendship. You can easily identify common friends between you and other users based on ‘likes’ and ‘comments’ you see under their post. Also you can tell your connection with one other friend is a bridge or local bridge if you never see any likes or comments under their post. 

In conclusion, using wechat as a tool to map out people’s social network can closely assembly to the real network people have. It also enable us to tell the strength of ties by analysis number of messages sent, numbers of comments or likes they left under each other’s post, or even by number of shared friends two users have. This will enable us to get more information and benefit further study and analysis.

 

 

 http://walkthechat.com/wechat-users-how-they-behave-and-how-to-attract-them/

When One App Rules Them All: The Case of WeChat and Mobile in China

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