From WeChat to Clubhouse: Xiaomi turns messaging app into social audio platform after shutting it down

Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi overhauled its defunct messaging app MiTalk, turning it into an invite-only audio chat platform for professionals

Since Clubhouse was banned in China, several similar apps have been vying to take its place, including Dizhua, Tiya and Two, backed by billionaire Justin Sun

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After MiTalk lost out to Tencent’s WeChat a decade ago, Xiaomi is overhauling its messaging app with a focus on audio chat, similar to Clubhouse. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 7:00am, 2 Mar 2021Updated: 7:00am, 2 Mar 2021

Smartphone giant Xiaomi has revived its defunct instant messaging app MiTalk as a social audio chat platform for professionals, a move that comes weeks after Clubhouse was banned in China.

The app was relaunched just eight days after the company shut down the original MiTalk on February 19 “due to changes in the business”, according to the company’s announcement in January on the app’s official Weibo account. With another announcement on Saturday, MiTalk was reintroduced as an audio-first chat app with features that mirror those of Clubhouse, which briefly surged in popularity in China in the first week of February.

The new MiTalk – which uses the Chinese name Jushou, or “hands up”, on Android app stores – is a platform “for professionals to share insights and raise [their] hands” in chat rooms to join discussions, MiTalk said in its latest announcement. Joining a discussion on Clubhouse works similarly, by tapping a hand icon to “raise a hand” and be recognised by room moderators.

New functionalities are not the only things inviting comparison with Clubhouse. Xiaomi turned MiTalk into an invite-only app during its beta stage, only making it open to users “on a small scale”, the company said. This is also the case with Clubhouse, which is still in beta after being in operation for nearly a year.

MiTalk has been around since 2010, but it never took off among Xiaomi users. The app lost out to WeChat, the now-ubiquitous super app that Tencent Holdings launched in 2011, when several mobile chat apps were fighting for dominance in the winner-take-all market.

“Xiaomi doesn’t have a big advantage in social media. MiTalk was launched even before WeChat, but it didn’t grow big,” said Ge Jia, an independent internet analyst.

The original MiTalk functioned similarly to other instant messaging apps, allowing users to chat, send files, make audio and video calls, and subscribe to public blogs.