61–70 of 104 posts
TL;DR, the mini program is basically WeChat's own chrome web store, web app with proprietary API to interact with WeChat. Didn't know why this is hyped so much, and there is nothing revolutionary about this. It makes the Chinese internet even more becoming WeChat's own walled garden.
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The situation is very similar in Korea with KakaoTalk. They have several apps within the messenger itself (e.g. even one that lets you book a hairdresser appointment) and currently still several outside (e.g. taxi hailing), but altogether they're in a similar position.
it's not similar, WeChat competition is blocked by Chinese government, kakao operates in free market
TL;DR, the mini program is basically WeChat's own chrome web store, web app with proprietary API to interact with WeChat. Didn't know why this is hyped so much, and there is nothing revolutionary about this. It makes the Chinese internet even more becoming WeChat's own walled garden.
there is no such thing as internet in China, correct word here for North Korea 2.0 is intranet, it's like calling something with 20% milk fat content butter
I may be out of the loop on the newest app developments so please correct me if I'm wrong, but why haven't we seen these kind of all encompassing chat apps take off in the US/West? Has no one tried it yet or are Western users somehow hostile to these kind of apps?
it's mostly because WeChat has gov protected monopoly over China, while Western chat apps operate in fragmented environment so it's really difficult to convince user to switch to them for payment if half of your contacts can't receive your payment and same goes for other functionality and building this features require critical mass of users which is just not possible in open market (well it's not possible on Android since Google seem to be suicidal regarding chat, is perfectly possible with iMessage)
Seems really similar to what Telegram has been trying to do for a while now. First with basic bots, then bots using custom keyboards and stickers, then with inline bots, and now with the game API (which basically allows you to package arbitrary HTML/JS/CSS into a bot message).
You are saying that the guy who cloned Facebook for Russian market (vk.com) is now building WeChat for Russia?
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Privacy and China don't play hand in hand.
Does true Privacy play hand in hand with any country? Since I don't live in China, should this bother me?
If we don't succeed in decentralizing user identity then centralized platforms like Facebook and WeChat will win. We need the Web to win in order for platforms to stay open, and innovation to flourish, and power dynamics to be more healthy. Here is me pontificating at length about it in a video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WzMm7-j7yIY
WeChat can make these moves because they know they have their back covered by the government. Even if Apple wants to do anything about it, they know they need to play nice with the Chinese government, and overall it makes more sense for them to let WeChat do whatever just so that they can sell iPhones in China.
Facebook can't do something like this easily. If Facebook went a bit too far to do something like this, Apple will definitely stop them.
With WeChat it's not that simple.
My point is, there are many reasons why something works or doesn't work, and many people tend to just see a single facet of the entire situation and decide. Like how these American VCs idolize WeChat and other Asian tech phenomenon and try to emulate them. "Who's the WeChat of America?" is the stupidest question to ask when trying to build an innovative company.
I will ask this again. Why is nobody here interested in building one app that does it all? Nobody wants to have 100 apps on their phones, or create 1000 online accounts. Such an app would easily make most tech companies obsolete. What part do people not understand?
not sure what's the difference between having million apps and functions hidden within one app instead of having them separated between more apps which also helps with diversifying risks and it's easier to organize
the thing is, people in West actually value their privacy sort off, while people in China are not even offered this option at table, so you end up with one gov approved app which they are monitoring and censoring
I may be out of the loop on the newest app developments so please correct me if I'm wrong, but why haven't we seen these kind of all encompassing chat apps take off in the US/West? Has no one tried it yet or are Western users somehow hostile to these kind of apps?
WeChat is majorly filled with bot accounts which do most of the stuff. And the webpages/requests are loaded to either fill the message box or load a webpage within the app to conclude the request.
As most of it is kind of local (banks, home security, grocery, etc) the bots are mostly locally available and so they haven't really flourished or even made for outside China.
A really better article to understand what WeChat provides was on the VC Andreessen Horowitz blog[1].
People seem to be very much hating how hostile it looks and feel but China's internet is a walled garden, WeChat falls perfectly inside the firewall to provide everything within the app. And that is the reason why such chat app won't work anywhere is because the world. We have access to internet and its apps completely, we have the power to choose whichever app we like unlike for China's user base which has been living with the habit to only look for apps and services which the government approves.
The article really is trying to convey that how WeChat has become the onestop for everything in China, which gives them that much reason to launch a OS around WeChat and not care about the other App Stores.