Alibaba goes social with enterprise chat app Ding Ding

When it comes to mobile chat apps, Tencent’s WeChat is undisputedly at the top of China’s market. But Tencent rival Alibaba sees an opening in the mobile chat space for an enterprise-focused chat app that it hopes to fill. Enter Ding Ding, Alibaba’s new mobile, browser, and desktop chat program aimed squarely at improving your workplace communication.

Ding Ding, which Alibaba launched for iOS, Android, web browsers, and OS X on Tuesday, comes with most of the features you’d expect from an enterprise chat app. Companies can be grouped into departments, making it easy for specific teams to communicate on the go without having to type every team member’s name into a massive group text or use third-party software to set up a conference call. And if you’re looking for one person in particular, you can find them by department and then easily shoot them a text, email, voice recording, or call by pressing a button in the app.

Calling and texting within Ding is fast and free (as long as you’ve got a wifi connection), but one of the app’s coolest business-friendly features may be its read notifications. When you send a message to your team (for example), you’ll get real-time and very clear notifications as each member of the team reads it, so that even if someone doesn’t respond you know everybody’s on the same page.

The app was reportedly developed through internal use at Alibaba’s Hangzhou headquarters, but thanks to an extended beta period it has already been put to use by some big-name clients, including Intel China. It’s not currently available in any language other than Chinese.

Ding Ding is Alibaba’s latest attempt to penetrate China’s social media market. But as in other sectors of social media, it will face stiff competition for the enterprise crown. Chinese enterprise chat app Maimai, for example, raised a US$20 million series B earlier this year, and as of then had nearly one million users. There are tons of other Chinese enterprise chat apps, including WorkingIM, Fengche, Mingdao, and IMO, already available to Chinese businesses. Many sport features similar to those offered by Ding Ding.

What may set Ding Ding apart from competitors, though, is its brand-name backing. Maimai’s series B investment was pretty big, but it’s absolutely nothing compared to the kind of cash Alibaba can bring to bear when the company decides to shake its money stick. That hasn’t really helped the company’s previous social efforts, but Alibaba has grown up quite a bit since then. Perhaps Ding Ding will be the thing that finally brings China’s biggest ecommerce company its first social victory.

This post Alibaba goes social with enterprise chat app Ding Ding appeared first on Tech in Asia.