What It Takes To Create A Chat App Like WeChat?
Developing an app is not a simple process, especially a messaging and chat app. There is a need for an experienced development team that has an understanding of how these apps function. You will need someone to manage backend infrastructure for handling functionalities and traffic. A team dedicated to UI/UX and branding of an application. Frontend development for users to interact for both android & iOS platforms and for the web interface. With the ban on the Chinese app, the users will have to boycott many applications that are being used on a daily basis.
One such application is Wechat, a messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent in 2011. According to ZDNet, WeChat has reportedly reached 1 billion daily active users in 2019.
Features
Messaging, voice messaging, voice & video calls.
Share real-time location with friends and updates & photos through the Moments feed.
Shake and Look Around feature to find people near you.
Read articles from accounts owned by traditional news outlets, online media, and solo bloggers, etc.
Wallet feature to transfer money and pay in stores, pay credit card and utility bills, etc.
Access to third-party services like online shopping, food delivery, etc.
Book doctor appointments, apply for visas and check driving records.
Use the Mini Program feature, which offers miniature, low-memory “apps” within the WeChat app itself.
Which technology can be used to build an app like WeChat
Erlang is an artificial language to support currency, distribution, and fault tolerance. It provides speed, performance, and quantifiability.
Extensible Messaging & Presence Protocol (XMPP) can be used to ensure network security and to transfer messages in real-time.
Amazon Simple Storage Service S3 for multimedia storage, high security and it offers scalable and powerful cloud-storage for objects.
PHP extension to run PHP as an Erlang node. It is an open-source extension that adds reliability and performance to the application.
Software Development Kit (SDK) is an open-source chat service and can be modified according to the needs
WebRTC is a support to build tailor-made applications. It can facilitate instant calls and provides a seamless texting experience.
Hosting services to keep synchronization between a chat app and servers. You can opt for either self-hosting services or a SaaS subscription.
Generating Revenue
There are different methods that can be used like display advertisement, every time the app shows an advertisement, it can earn a commission fee. Such apps usually track the users’ movements to understand how the ad will show up & work.
WeChat mini program turned its users into businessmen by allowing them to set up their shops in the app, this helped them attract a billion of users and sell their products across the globe, their reach was increased.
Another feature subscription account where users can simply earn by using the app by posting content. The more the response on the content, the better the reward for the user. This can help app maintain engaging traffic and this would also help their advertisements to flourish.
Summing Up
The chat app market is ever-growing, thus, it will keep on creating opportunities for app development companies like W3villa Technologies to build amazing chat applications using the latest technologies and advanced machinery to build unbeatable solutions to cover up the loss occurred due to the ban on Chinese apps.
