Yesterday, rumors began to spread across the Chinese web that Alibaba, the e-commerce giant behind Taobao and Tmall, was shutting down the interface between its platforms and Tencent’s WeChat chat app. Now, the company has officially responded, seeming to confirm these rumors and offering an explanation for the reason behind the shutdown (our translation):

Recently we have discovered some sellers using the WeChat sales application to harass consumers, seriously influencing their experience, and there are even a few sellers using the app to conduct the entire transaction outside of Taobao’s safe payment system, which creates a hidden risk for customers. Therefore, to protect customers’ user experience and to control risky transactions, we have temporarily stopped [accepting] orders from WeChat apps on the service marketplace.

At the same time, we’ve also seen the WeChat team recently come out with measures to limit sales of Taobao products through WeChat to protect the user experience of WeChat users, and this is identical to our own desire to protect our customers’ experience and safety.

So it seems that at least for the moment, the rumors are true. (We’ve contacted Alibaba for clarification on just how long this “temporary” measure is likely to be in effect). (See the bottom of this post for an official statement from Alibaba).

But of course, Alibaba’s official explanation is, as these things always are, a work of the PR department, and some skeptics have already suggested that there may be other motives in play. Chief among them is Alibaba’s partnership and investment in WeChat rival Sina Weibo. Whether or not that has anything to do with this move, it’s undeniable that Alibaba does have a stake in Weibo’s success, and many (including me) would argue that the biggest threat to Weibo’s success right now is probably WeChat.

Conspiracy theories aside, though, the long and short of it is that for now, at least, there’s going to be a little less Taobao in your WeChat, and vice versa.

UPDATE: Here’s an official English-language statement from Alibaba:

There is a faction of sellers, we have learned, who are using WeChat marketing applications to harass and disturb our users, in some cases even using the application to lead users outside of the Taobao Marketplace and Tmall.com payment process and putting consumer transactional security at risk; so we have therefore decided to temporarily suspend the subscription of WeChat-related applications in the seller-side service app market and encourage our sellers to conduct their marketing activities in a safe and legitimate manner.

(via TechWeb and TechWeb again)