5 ms·

Well this sows seeds of mistrust. If commerce infiltrate our private conversation, it turn from convenience to creepy. Every conversation will invoke a feeling

Well this sows seeds of mistrust. If commerce infiltrate our private conversation, it turn from convenience to creepy. Every conversation will invoke a feeling that someone is trying to sell something for profit. This is one of the issues in modern commerce in China.

llarsson 7y ago
Sounds like a whole platform built for MLM type of commerce. Somebody you ostensibly trust and think you know just tries to sell you stuff.
- PakG1 7y ago
  Social commerce would be different from MLM though. MLM has incentive to recruit salespeople and then profit off of the salespeople you recruit, usually several levels down. This creates immense pressure on those at the bottom, as their revenue potential is much more difficult to realize. China started heavily regulating MLM due to the social problems it was creating among a large populace that was only still just starting to develop their economy. M without the multiple levels (ML from MLM) is completely different and still feasible in this social setting.
  - dragonsh 7y ago
    In China Amway (called Anli in China) and Mary Kay generates over 40% of its global revenue. It's memebers actively promote and use WeChat and their relationship with personal friend for sale. All the live broadcaster use their friends network. Every conversation happening in WeChat or other messaging app is analyzed multiple times to figure out what could be sold to those people to generate profit. It becomes tiring when you can only see in everything one do someone is trying to sale something, be it taking taxi, trying to talk with your friends, watching movie, even when people sleep companies try to analyze their sleep and process the information to find what can be sold to that person.
iforgotpassword 7y ago
How so? Nobody forces you to join such a group, or is trying to hide the fact that it's commercial. If I booked a vacation with some company and they offered me to join their WhatsApp group specific to my destination I see nothing wrong with that. The reason we don't have that here is probably that it's too expensive. In China you can hire someone for next to nothing to monitor some WeChat groups and have them answer frequent questions or extract potentially useful new information from other users conversation in that group. Shouldn't be too surprising and if you don't want this, don't join. Like when you're uncomfortable with sharing random recordings from your home with Amazon, don't buy Alexa.
galuggus 7y ago
This is very compatible with Chinese culture. It is very normal to do business (even very small transactions) with your friend group. This is partly because of very low levels of trust in society and partly to keep money from leaving your social group.
contingencies 7y ago
If commerce infiltrate our private conversation, it turn from convenience to creepy. Every conversation will invoke a feeling that someone is trying to sell something for profit. This is one of the issues in modern commerce in China. Err, WeChat doesn't have any advertising, notably unlike Google and Facebook.
- adventured 7y ago
  > Err, WeChat doesn't have any advertising, notably unlike Google and Facebook. What? WeChat does have advertising. "So what does advertising on WeChat look like? For the most part, ads on WeChat are similar to those seen across most social platforms. Brands can create Official Accounts that users can choose to subscribe to." "Brands can also raise awareness by running paid campaigns focused on driving new users to subscribe to their official account." "Other paid popular paid tactics include display banner ads and WeChat Moments. Moments are essentially WeChat’s version of Facebook ads. These populate in a user’s social feed so that they appear native and unintrusive. Advertisers can choose to either place up to six static photos or up to 6-15 second videos." https://www.pmg.com/blog/3-things-to-know-about-advertising-on-wechat/ https://www.pmg.com/blog/3-things-to-know-about-advertising-... "Since Tencent announced WeChat advertising in 2015, we have now helped dozens of brands launch campaigns on the platform." https://www.shenglidigital.com/blog/why-advertisers-should-care-about-wechat-advertising/ https://www.shenglidigital.com/blog/why-advertisers-should-c... "A Comprehensive Guide to WeChat Advertising" https://tenbagroup.com/chinese-marketing/a-comprehensive-guide-to-wechat-advertising/ https://tenbagroup.com/chinese-marketing/a-comprehensive-gui... "Advertising on WeChat: cost, format, targeting, rules & regulations" https://wechatwiki.com/wechat-resources/wechat-advertising-media-buying-guide/ https://wechatwiki.com/wechat-resources/wechat-advertising-m...
  - yorwba 7y ago
    They don't show ads for European users to comply with the GDPR, which is why one might get the impression that they don't show ads to anyone.
  - contingencies 7y ago

llarsson 7y ago

Sounds like a whole platform built for MLM type of commerce. Somebody you ostensibly trust and think you know just tries to sell you stuff.

PakG1 7y ago
Social commerce would be different from MLM though. MLM has incentive to recruit salespeople and then profit off of the salespeople you recruit, usually several levels down. This creates immense pressure on those at the bottom, as their revenue potential is much more difficult to realize. China started heavily regulating MLM due to the social problems it was creating among a large populace that was only still just starting to develop their economy. M without the multiple levels (ML from MLM) is completely different and still feasible in this social setting.
- dragonsh 7y ago
  In China Amway (called Anli in China) and Mary Kay generates over 40% of its global revenue. It's memebers actively promote and use WeChat and their relationship with personal friend for sale. All the live broadcaster use their friends network. Every conversation happening in WeChat or other messaging app is analyzed multiple times to figure out what could be sold to those people to generate profit. It becomes tiring when you can only see in everything one do someone is trying to sale something, be it taking taxi, trying to talk with your friends, watching movie, even when people sleep companies try to analyze their sleep and process the information to find what can be sold to that person.

iforgotpassword 7y ago

How so? Nobody forces you to join such a group, or is trying to hide the fact that it's commercial. If I booked a vacation with some company and they offered me to join their WhatsApp group specific to my destination I see nothing wrong with that. The reason we don't have that here is probably that it's too expensive. In China you can hire someone for next to nothing to monitor some WeChat groups and have them answer frequent questions or extract potentially useful new information from other users conversation in that group. Shouldn't be too surprising and if you don't want this, don't join. Like when you're uncomfortable with sharing random recordings from your home with Amazon, don't buy Alexa.

galuggus 7y ago

This is very compatible with Chinese culture. It is very normal to do business (even very small transactions) with your friend group. This is partly because of very low levels of trust in society and partly to keep money from leaving your social group.

contingencies 7y ago

If commerce infiltrate our private conversation, it turn from convenience to creepy. Every conversation will invoke a feeling that someone is trying to sell something for profit. This is one of the issues in modern commerce in China. Err, WeChat doesn't have any advertising, notably unlike Google and Facebook.

adventured 7y ago
> Err, WeChat doesn't have any advertising, notably unlike Google and Facebook. What? WeChat does have advertising. "So what does advertising on WeChat look like? For the most part, ads on WeChat are similar to those seen across most social platforms. Brands can create Official Accounts that users can choose to subscribe to." "Brands can also raise awareness by running paid campaigns focused on driving new users to subscribe to their official account." "Other paid popular paid tactics include display banner ads and WeChat Moments. Moments are essentially WeChat’s version of Facebook ads. These populate in a user’s social feed so that they appear native and unintrusive. Advertisers can choose to either place up to six static photos or up to 6-15 second videos." https://www.pmg.com/blog/3-things-to-know-about-advertising-on-wechat/ https://www.pmg.com/blog/3-things-to-know-about-advertising-... "Since Tencent announced WeChat advertising in 2015, we have now helped dozens of brands launch campaigns on the platform." https://www.shenglidigital.com/blog/why-advertisers-should-care-about-wechat-advertising/ https://www.shenglidigital.com/blog/why-advertisers-should-c... "A Comprehensive Guide to WeChat Advertising" https://tenbagroup.com/chinese-marketing/a-comprehensive-guide-to-wechat-advertising/ https://tenbagroup.com/chinese-marketing/a-comprehensive-gui... "Advertising on WeChat: cost, format, targeting, rules & regulations" https://wechatwiki.com/wechat-resources/wechat-advertising-media-buying-guide/ https://wechatwiki.com/wechat-resources/wechat-advertising-m...
- yorwba 7y ago
  They don't show ads for European users to comply with the GDPR, which is why one might get the impression that they don't show ads to anyone.
- contingencies 7y ago