is it a professional tool for business use, whats your opinions on it. i think maybe ok if relationship established but not for new relationship building/marketting/sales/recruitment. what do you guys thinks?

I disagree as a bar owner we use our wechat group for advertising. but I dont spam none advertising groups.

I think that first is verifiable e-mail address communications and company websites. If after communicating this way you want to chat instantly then Wechat is an excellent tool afterwards. I don't like it when they require that you 'add' me to your wechat in order to get in contact or get more information. I'm old-fashion that way.

Many advertisements where people only leave their wechat as a contact - they are so stupid and assume 100% of the population uses wechat.

Also, very stupid to put all of ones private info for all to see. Their day will come and they will be crying for privacy in no time soon.

HFCAMPO
I know what kind of mobile phone you use - WECHAT is absolutely not targeting you as a user and I respect both sides of that issue.

WECHAT is a P2P social media platform that provides a wealth of additional features, including B2C and C2B. Western social media platforms, such as twitter, etc are beginning to copy the Chinese phenomenon as an extension to increasing market share and revenues without the annoying googleads crap. Expect to see a flurry of M&As as they snap up applications and services. WECHAT et al will naturally suffer from abuses, such as spam, identify theft, and solicitations for sketchy services - so caveat emptor. Abuses can be reported and similar to most social media platforms, requires an unpublished and un-advertised critical mass of complaints before some kind of punitive or blocking action is enforced.

It's a great platform for group messaging, but not particularly useful for professional group messaging (look at bitrix24, github et al for something more professional and private).

As for protecting your identify - putting yourself out on the internet demands a certain amount of discretion and common sense. The need to publish one's self online for the world to see, when you wouldn't normally reveal such information personally to a complete stranger defies logic.

Along with useful public and social benefits, comes all the associated abuses, but I've personally found WECHAT to be an interesting and diverse platform for providing a wide breadth of consumer services - from their UBER clone, POS e-payments, paying bills, ordering delivery services, etc ad infinitum.

But again, a modicum of common sense is in order.

And for the record, WECHAT and similar social media platforms in China were recently lauded in the hi-tech west as examples of copied western tech that then took off in a flurry of incredible innovation to become a global example of the commercialization of formerly free web services WITHOUT the click ads approach to revenue generation - although those activities are most certainly also present.

My neighbor uses WECHAT to run her own home-based store selling various products to her increasingly growing network of contacts.

Best approximation is an network extension of the AMWAY/Nutrilife/Mary Kay et al social networking businesses, using a social media platform - with the associated risks of doing business online for both parties.

Wechat is for 'chatting' and sharing photos. You can chat as professionally as you need on it (from emojis to formal expertise) It's a great marketing, business, recruitment tool in certain circumstances if used wisely.

The tools you use depend on your requirements, some of which Michael2015 has mentioned. Wechat can even be used in tandem with other stuff. For businesses like darkone264's and local businesses it's ideal for all the points Dazzer said it was not good for.

Basically, its a good tool 'for today' and a good current asset for any businessperson.

I have been asked to conduct an interview on Wechat messaging service (not voice, not video). The person would not take a phone call, as a personal policy. I chose to decline the offer of an interview.
I have had another more recent experience where a young local woman conducted a most unprofessional communication using wechat, in a recruitment setting.
I think one of the problems is that people see the headline that 'Wechat is a good business tool', and then stop reading. Many people don't dig any deeper and miss the provisos and caveats of using this new tool. Perhaps because we now take for granted the risk and limitations, when using other more traditional forms of communication. Or perhaps people can slip into this all tech is inherently good (it's neutral), and the 'plug and play' mentality.

NOTE TO BOSSES
If you have inexperienced staff, conducting business using Wechat, I strongly advise you check what they are doing. They may know all of the Wechat bells and whistles, it does not mean they know professionalism in business communication. If one thinks of the care and hours poured into Website design, to create the right impression, this level of care is required in all customer facing media.

Maybe it depends on your expectation. If you think of it as a personal social media, similar to Facebook or Instagram, then maybe you will get annoyed with marketing messages appearing. But we need to recognize that WeChat is WeChat and is not simply a Chinese version of something else we think we are familiar with. WeChat is used for what WeChat is used for, and many people find it a useful tool for advertising etc. If I don't like the spam that someone sends me, then I can disconnect from that person, and if someone posts too many ads on Moments then I have the option to hide their posts. Other than that, I can learn to enjoy the uses of the app that I want to enjoy.

Agree, Wechat is like email and will find its own place.

When they first started writing email training back in the late 1990s, people were told to use email in the same way that they would post-it notes, or memos.
By the early 2000s email had become the main means of business communication at every level (unless hard copy documents were needed for legal reasons). However is it still used socially, spamming and for nefarious purposes.
I think the point I am trying to make is that, like email, if people are going to use it for professional purposes, they should consider how to use it professionally.

Generation divide, young wins. Just like mailing a letter is dead in the west, phone calls and sms is practically dead for anyone under 40 in China. They use wechat every day, 365 days a year, hundreds of times a day. Maybe they take one call from a relative and get sms from their bank confirming the payments they made on wechat. There is a reason Tencent is the most valuable company in China.