Jack Ma Will Use Alibaba's Messaging App Even If No One Else Will

As of today, the chairman of China’s biggest e-commerce company is no longer using China’s most popular mobile messaging app. Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma posted a message on WeChat, the app owned by rival Tencent, on Tuesday, saying he was shutting down his account in three days.

Give Ma credit: In publicly dropping WeChat, he at least succeeded in drawing attention to one of his company’s more obscure services. With more than 200 million users, Tencent’s WeChat is to Alibaba’s alternative, Laiwang, what Google is to Bing. Few Chinese users have seen a need to switch to an also-ran service that was late to the market, and, as of last month, there were only about 1 million Laiwang users, Alibaba told Bloomberg News. (The company wouldn’t comment on Ma’s decision to shut his WeChat account.)