The fundamental reason for adopting the mini-program extension was to expand the service range for an individual app, thus keeping users within that system by providing as many facilities as he might potentially require. However, that purpose has been superseded by a marketing function. Recently, Alibaba’s fintech arm Ant Financial is reported to have its mini-program features be integrated with the leading social media platform Weibo, which is also backed by Alibaba, aiming to serve users’ needs in a broader spectrum. The collaboration will enable those applets which have been around in Alipay to be found in Weibo, which avail to merchants and companies the ability to tap into the social networking traffic favorable to their own business reach.
