WhatsApp vs. WeChat vs. Telegram – Who is the World’s Largest Communication Provider?
With the continuing evolution of the world’s technology and the growing demands for more techy solutions, communication has been one of the first-hand witnesses to these changes and upgrades. The world saw how communication evolved throughout countless of years. From the old mailing services that would take months to be delivered and old telephone calls that are limited to few minutes and quite pricey to keypad cellphones that offers instant messages and calls, to desktop mailings and now to digital platforms like WhatsApp, WeChat and Telegram which features on-cam and remote conversations.
WeChat, also known as China’s most popular messaging application and is one of the top three platforms that may be considered as the world’s largest communication provider, with the record of over 1 billion users introduced WeChat Work or WeCom. WeCom was introduced as a messaging application for internal communications and management, which is crucial with today’s changes in working environment, as remote work, or work-from-home setups are now being more utilized as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic.
And because of this working environment shift, recording work conversations is necessary for every business in order to keep a safe and healthy digital work community. One Chinese rule that applies to WeCom is the mass surveillance network. Simply, China regulates electronic communication applications through its Cybersecurity Law that includes the need of capturing personal digital information to store it in mainland China like. Thus, companies that utilizes WeCom for their business operations do implement WeChat call recording, apart from aforementioned message monitoring.
Because of WeChat and WeCom’s massive number of users, companies may have a hard time in monitoring every conversation done with these apps. Thus, a third party service provider for WeChat archiving may be necessary in order to comply with China’s Cybersecurity Law and continue smooth remote, online collaborative work setups.
WeChat may be the prominent digital communication tool in China, yet there are other platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram that cater other business-related demands and are more utilized in other countries such as the United States. WeChat may be considered as the top communications provider, that implements strict security measures but there are other factors like monthly active or unique users, growth in number of users, etc. that should be taken into consideration before naming who the biggest communication provider among digital messaging platforms is.
Here’s an up-to-date infographic from TeleMessage that thoroughly discusses more about WeChat, WhatsApp, Telegram and who is the largest communication provider among the three said platforms in terms of different aspects.