Tencent Further Opens Up Its "Walled Gardens" To Alibaba

China's regulatory crackdown compels Tencent Holdings Ltd TCEHY to allow soon WeChat groups to display links to external shopping sites like Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's BABA Tmall and Taobao, Bloomberg reports.

• Previously Tencent resisted dismantling WeChat's barriers for fear of diluting the experience and driving users to rivals like ByteDance Ltd's Douyin.
• Tencent will begin testing a function "soon" to allow group-chat participants to share links to third-party e-commerce platforms.
• Tencent looks to eventually allow WeChat's users more options for sharing content and promised to let them tweak settings to manage external sharing in the future.
• Tencent's signature app WeChat anchors the daily transactions of over a billion Chinese.
• Tencent previously allowed users who upgraded to the latest version of WeChat to share external links only in one-on-one conversations.
• Related Content: Tencent Relaxes Selective Content Access Following Regulatory Crackdown: Bloomberg
• Price Action: BABA shares traded higher by 0.75% at $134.35 in the premarket session on the last check Monday.