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.
Cite this article
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 -