How did Tencent take WeChat so far ahead of its rivals? The answer lies partly in the peculiarities of the local market. Unlike most Westerners, many Chinese possessed multiple mobile devices, and they quickly took to an app that offered then an easy way to integrate them all into a single digital identity. In America messaging apps had a potent competitor in the form of basic mobile-phone plans, which bundied in SMS messaging. But text messages were costly in China, so consumers eagerly adopted free messaging app. And e-mail never took off on the mainlandthe way it has around the world, mainly because the internet came late; that left an opening for messaging apps. But the bigger explanation for Wechat's rise is Tencent's ability to innovate. Many Chinese grew up using QQ, a PC?based messaging platform offered by Tencent that still has over 800m registered users. QQ was a copy of ICQ, a pioneering Israeli Messaging service .But then Chinese imitator learned to think for itself. Spotting the coming rise of the internet.Tencent challenged several internal teams to design and develop a smartphone-only messaging app. The QQ insiders came up with something along the lines of their existing product for the the PC, but another team of outsiders( from a just-acquired firm)came up with Weixin. When Tencent launched the new app,it made it easy for QQ'users to transfer their contacts over to the new app. Another stroke of brilliance came two years ago when the service launched a “red packet”campaign in which WeChat users were able to send digital money to friends and family to celebrate Chinese New Year rather than sending cash in a red envelope, as is customary. It was clever of the firm to turn dutiful gift-giving into an exciting game, notes Connie Chan of Andreessen Horowitz, a VC firm. It also encouraged users to bind together into send money, often in randomized amounts.