Run by the tech giant Tencent, Chinese app phenomenon WeChat has currently more than one billion users for its many features that go from messaging to ordering meals. But although securing a wide market share, a particular player has been threatening WeChat’s empire: TikTok‘s parent company ByteDance. 

Having hit 1.5 billion downloads in November, TikTok and its Chinese twin Douyin have been growing in relevance, attracting an increasing number of young users with its short video and lip-syncing sharing platform as well as luring advertisers out of WeChat. And precisely to tackle ByteDance’s apps success, WeChat will launch an update to let their users post videos and photos to their followers via a feed, as reported by Bloomberg. 

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The news media outlet learned that the service will launch soon but no further detail was revealed by Tencent. “While Tencent’s strategy to retain users and content makes sense, the company needs to tread carefully, because unrestricted short-video publishing may lead to content that is trashy and low-brow, and often also repetitive and non-differentiated,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Vey-Sern Ling.

ByteDance is currently the world’s most valuable startup and besides the popular TikTok app, has also a news service called Toutiao – both of which have been challenging Tencent’s share in the Chinese social media market.