WeChat & Weibo users top the world’s most active online shoppers

Encouraged by the success of some social networking apps as WeChat, many leading social networks across the world start integrating online commerce capabilities for new areas of revenues.

Combined MAU (monthly active users) of Weixin and WeChat were 600 million, an increase of 37% YoY in Q2 2015, according to Tencent's unaudited consolidated results for the second quarter of 2015, and the social networking revenue increased 18% YoY to $853 million, major resulted from WeChat commerce.

Among the global social network users, one-third utilized product search as the major driving force of using social media. In June 2015, one-fourth Facebook active users had searched to find products. Social networking users are also enthusiastic online shoppers; two-thirds of Facebook users shopped online; seven-tenths Snapchat users and three-fourths Instagram users also shopped online.

However, so far the social networking purchase feature has not attracted the majority of users. Only one-tenth of active users indicated that such shopping feature increased the possibility of online shopping. Social networking users were used to employ social networking as the early platform of online shopping while completing the whole shopping process on social networks might still be a challenge.