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How WeChat Came to Rule China
- dangrover 9y agoGarbage article with no new information, regurgitating random bits of English-language blog posts about the app, with no "how".
- CodeSheikh 9y agoThe govt blocking the access of similar foreign apps (Whatsapp, Skype etc.) to the Chinese people has some role to play in the popularity of it. But yeah nice to see "Made in China first, for Chinese first" idea working out well for local investors/technologists.
- prklmn 9y agoAnd too bad so sad for the rest of the world that can't operate there! Our only place in the market is to buy cheap manufactured goods :)
- Feniks 9y agoIt was the West (and Japan people always forget Japan) who invested trillions in the Chinese economy. And not out of charity.
- sniperjzp 9y ago> The govt blocking the access of similar foreign apps (Whatsapp, Skype etc.) to the Chinese people has some role to play in the popularity of it. This is not accurate. Along with WeChat and QQ, people can freely use Skype and MSN messenger in China. The success behind WeChat and QQ relies on their rich features, fast iterations, etc. I still remember that during the 360 vs Tencent event, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360_v._Tencent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360_v._Tencent, a lot of people switched to Skype as their communication tool to against the company Tencent, but not long after that people switched back to WeChat and QQ. It's simply because WeChat and QQ are easier to use.
- pmlnr 9y agoMSN has been dead for years, how can people in China freely use it?
- NoPiece 9y agoI hadn't realized that QQ and WeChat are part of Tencent, but are part of different divisions. It would be interesting to know how collaborative or rivalrous the relation between them is.
- TACIXAT 9y agoQQ was a desktop focused app and WeChat was a ground up write of messaging for mobile. Competing against themselves is pretty brilliant IMO, it creates alternatives for the users but still allows their company to own the market. Interesting YC blog about Tencent and WeChat. [1] 1. http://blog.ycombinator.com/lessons-from-wechat/ http://blog.ycombinator.com/lessons-from-wechat/
- xbeta 9y ago> This is not accurate. Along with WeChat and QQ, people can freely use Skype and MSN messenger in China. The success behind WeChat and QQ relies on their rich features, fast iterations, etc. Really? I am not sure about Skype which is not even a strong contender anymore in our mobile generation, but WhatsApp is definitely blocked by China[1]. And MSN was dead long ago. [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/25/whatsapp-blocked-in-china/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/25/whatsapp-blocked-in-china/
- sandov 9y agoAnd terribly bad for every Chinese citizen that doesn't own the company.
- gaius 9y agoBut yeah nice to see "Made in China first, for Chinese first" idea working out well for local investors/technologists. Make China Great Again?
- odiroot 9y agoThat definitely helped to grab the long tail but in general WeChat is so much more than WhatsApp (Skype is even lower league). You use it to pay in restaurants, buy metro tickets, rent a bike, order a taxi, order courier services etc. In China it's not an app, it's the app. If they integrated Meituan (local recommendations and discount coupons) you wouldn't need any other app to survive.
- Pica_soO 9y agoYeah, allowing for competition worked out so nice for everyone else- like europe, africa, the middle east and russia. All power houses of the information technology.
- bonsai80 9y agoI got excited and clicked to see why so many people in China are avoiding proprietary closed IM networks and using IRC instead. Bummer, not what I thought :) http://www.irchelp.org/clients/unix/weechat.html http://www.irchelp.org/clients/unix/weechat.html
- tsunamifury 9y agoThe general theory that I have is that the Great Migration brought millions of chinese citizens to the city, who neither had bank accounts, credit cards, or phones. The pathway to connecting with friends, businesses, and money or even finding jobs immediately became "Get WeChat and a phone." This lead to a reenforcement cycle with businesses, that they had to offer services on WeChat to get new customers and combined with the injections of cash due to the overall modernization of China, it allowed WeChat to grow even more. And of course, add in the local government blocking foreign competitors. Thus a large portion of some individuals where basically introduced to modern computing via phones and via chat and businesses started advertising "Chat-first" as well. I've seen roughly the same in India with WhatsApp, but with a lot less discrete functionality. Feel free to correct my theory though, it's mostly outside observation...
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoThe lower end you go, the more popular QQ is over WeChat, at least that was the case a few years ago (I'm sure WeChat is over dominating now). WeChat started to become popular firmly among the middle and upper classes as far as I could tell.
- tsunamifury 9y agoThats a fair point that asks 'Why did WeChat become the upper/middle city class chat app of choice over QQ and others' and I'd love for someone to weigh in there...
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoQQ didn't require a smartphone, while WeChat did. You can basically see WeChat adoption as being correlated with smartphone adoption (and the middle class adopted them first). Also, young people are more likely to use QQ than WeChat because QQ is anonymous and focuses on gaming, they are much less interested in WeChat's location-based and commerce features. Note that QQ and WeChat are both Tencent, they aren't meant to be in direct competition with each other.
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- m3kw9 9y agoDon’t get too big, or you get Nationalized if the govt thinks they have too much control on the people
- ridiculous_fish 9y agoI understand WeChat to be effectively an application platform. It runs messaging, payments, delivery tracking, and many more mini programs, and runs on devices that are relatively old and underpowered by US standards. How is this architected? Is there a platform/app separation, or just a pile of spaghetti, or something in between?
- cmplxconjugate 9y agoHaving just returned from China after a year, I must also point out that 支付宝 (Alipay) is also extremely popular for payments. Also, tsunamifury noted that their theory is that the wave of migrants "...who neither had bank accounts, credit cards, or phones" is partly responsible. Again, I must point out however that WePay requires a linked bank account in order to allow for the transfer of money.
- xbeta 9y agoPlease also point out that that "linked bank account" is currently only work for China banks. If you are using foreign banks, no luck. :-( And every significant transaction required you to provide ID, which is currently supporting China ID, some apps do have support for foreign passports, but do you want to share your passports to those China apps?
- woolvalley 9y agoIf it makes you feel any better, most countries financial apps don't link with foreign bank accounts either, unless it's a credit card. Credit histories also don't cross borders easily. SEPA & the EU is the special case exception I've found.
- xbeta 9y ago> unless it's a credit card Nope, that exception don't even existed in Alipay/WeChat Pay as well :-) Being foreigner in China sucks.
- ftoo 9y agoBefore wasting your time on this hopelessly optimistic article, here is the most important sentence: “Tencent is a content partner of The Verge in China.”
- ekianjo 9y agoAnother PR piece. I wish magazines stopped this kind of practices.
- intopieces 9y agoThe article is up front about the privacy invasion of the app, and mentions Amnesty International’s 0 out of 100 score for that reason.
- Proven 9y agoThanks to the help of the China government
- ekianjo 9y agoIts like "why the trabant came to dominate the russian automobile market".
- n1000 9y agoIn my team a lot of people use WeChat. So I set out to give it a try. When I was forced to leave my voiceprint [1], I chickened out and aborted the registration. [1] http://blog.wechat.com/2015/05/21/voiceprint-the-new-wechat-password/ http://blog.wechat.com/2015/05/21/voiceprint-the-new-wechat-...
- yorwba 9y agoHow were you forced? I'd never heard of that and just double-checked to confirm that it isn't enabled on my account.
- n1000 9y agoit was a step in the registration process that I could not skip
- dis-sys 9y agoI have been using WeChat on daily basis for 5-6 years now, this is the first time I've ever heard the voiceprint feature. Checked my wechat client and the feature is like 4 clicks away from the main UI, and you get choose to activate it if you want.
- n1000 9y agoYes, my Chinese colleagues were also surprised. Apparently the requirement seems to be a new thing.