Digital Infrastructure: a Framework for the Incremental Evolution of the WeChat Platform

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-277-4_113How to use a DOI?

Keywords

microsoft platform; digital infrastructure; incremental evolutionary framework

Abstract

Since its birth in 2011, WeChat has evolved from an instant messaging software to a digital ecosystem that integrates socialization, entertainment, and content. This paper introduces a platform power perspective, which is no longer limited to the interaction between the platform and end-users, but rather positions WeChat as a large-scale commercial organization or infrastructure with close ties to its partners. Combining historical analysis, we explore the historical framework of the platform's progressive evolution from both technical and economic dimensions: firstly, we examine how WeChat continuously expands the platform's boundaries by leveraging programmability, and then further embeds itself in other markets by establishing partnerships, including horizontal industrial diversification, vertical partner incentives, and advertising ecology, and ultimately acquiring both technological and economic infrastructural attributes. By combing the expansion of WeChat's boundary resources and the shifting of WeChat's self-positioning, it is demonstrated that WeChat is not a digital revolution per se, but rather an incremental evolutionary journey that has lasted over a decade.

Copyright

© 2024 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Linqin Fan
PY  - 2024
DA  - 2024/09/02
TI  - Digital Infrastructure: a Framework for the Incremental Evolution of the WeChat Platform
BT  - Proceedings of the 2024 10th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1014
EP  - 1020
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-277-4_113
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-277-4_113
ID  - Fan2024
ER  -