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At least Wechat had pushed two things powerfully, one is QR Code, the other one is HTML5.
I am in China right this instant and (like everyone) I have wechat on my phone. Perhaps the services mentioned don't have much use/appeal to expats, but I have never heard of any of the stuff mentioned in this article. Wechat to me is just a texting app because data is cheaper than texts (thanks China Mobile). At first I couldn't even find any of the features mentioned. some of the stuff (taxi's, planes) are hidden i…
At least Wechat had pushed two things powerfully, one is QR Code, the other one is HTML5.
Who in their right mind uses QR codes!?! As a human you have no idea where that thing is pointing, so why on earth would you trust it? At least with a URL I have half a chance of knowing if I'm about to be hit by a phishing attack.
I am in China right this instant and (like everyone) I have wechat on my phone. Perhaps the services mentioned don't have much use/appeal to expats, but I have never heard of any of the stuff mentioned in this article. Wechat to me is just a texting app because data is cheaper than texts (thanks China Mobile). At first I couldn't even find any of the features mentioned. some of the stuff (taxi's, planes) are hidden i…
Well, I used China Unicom, but I noticed something similar. I got a SIM card about two years ago with "no internet plan". It turned out to have data connectivity anyway, so I just used it for that. Every month I'd get messages stating "you have used X amount of data, of which X is in excess of your monthly limit". And yet... I was spending much less money on phone service than even the cheapest official data plan, so I left it that way. Any idea how this sort of situation came about?
I live in China, and resisted using wechat for a year or so, until it became clear that I was essentially removing myself from the majority of China's online world. I'm still highly annoyed when I get seven minutes' worth of 30-second voice clips from someone, or when people insist on using it as a replacement for email (essentially, using it as a replacement for all internet-based communication, period), but it's im…
Also as you pointed out in the end, it's not just that you remove yourself from the Chinese internet world. You don't have access to China in general without it. It's so integrated in people's daily life that it's nearly impossible to separate online and offline any more.
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Or the mobile messaging ecosystem in US will look a lot more like wechat in 3-5 years. China can be ahead in some areas.
If china is ahead in this, then humanity might as well pack it in. China's sandbox model works well when you've got a few hundred million uneducated peasants, but an educated populous (Which china is having more success stopping than I care to admit) wants diversity; It wants options, differing opinions, choices that cater to them, not to what people want to offer them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who in their right mind uses QR codes!?! As a human you have no idea where that thing is pointing, so why on earth would you trust it? At least with a URL I have half a chance of knowing if I'm about to be hit by a phishing attack.
A) Trust is not an issue in these regards in China. B) when your chat app generates a QR code that the chat app of the friend or the payment tool from a shop uses it's quite clear what the QR code means. It's not that there are random QR Codes everywhere on the street and you have to trust them. If you want to add me, I don't tell you my nick name but just show you my QR code on my phone and you add through your app,…
You are at the mercy of the source of the QR code, with no real way of being able to validate it before scanning.