Unlike Facebook, using wechat on desktop is a pain. Also doesn't support multiple device.
On Growing: Lessons from the Story of WeChat
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Re: On Growing: Lessons from the Story of WeChat
#62Unlike Facebook, using wechat on desktop is a pain. Also doesn't support multiple device.
Agreed. But their audiences are folks never need/own a desktop/laptop in the past. In China and many South-Asian countries, ownership of smartphones are higher than PC.
Re: On Growing: Lessons from the Story of WeChat
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's exactly what makes the problem so interesting. The user experience of WeChat is clearly great, but that level of centralization really wouldn't fly over here.
I think we are used to using multiple apps for different services because that is how it started. However if we were used to using one app for everything, things would have been different
Is Internet that "One-App-for-Everything"? I saw WeChat is rebuilding its own Internet there. And everything is building on top of that ecosystem.
Re: On Growing: Lessons from the Story of WeChat
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
> WeChat is lightyears ahead of what the west can offer , in terms of product. It has many many useful features and is smooth, reliable As a westerner, is there like a list of such use cases to help get the point across? The things I've read so far here sound like the kind of things we already have offerings for too (making travel easier or etc), just not usually all under one roof. Sending money via text is a great…
I have lived in China for 6 months, and from the top of my head: - Voice/Text Chat - (Video) calling - Payment service (like Apple or Android pay) - Buy movie tickets - Buy plane tickets - Send money via Chat. - Splitt the bills. - Pay the government (utility companies etc) directly from WeChat - Find people nearby (like tinder? But less so than TanTan) - Chat on desktop (like whatsapp web, but native client) - Log o…
Does it have end to end encryption though? That's kind of a killer feature.
Re: On Growing: Lessons from the Story of WeChat
#65As a China-approved messenger application would anyone trust this as their primary mode of communication? This is not meant to be snarky or biased. Considering the control China has on citizen communication (eg the great firewall), what guarantee does anyone using the app have that all data isn't being fed through the Chinese version of the NSA? Also: how much of the growth can be attributed to less competition in th…
There is ridiculous amount of competition an innovation in the Chinese app market. Every time I visit China, I'm surprised by something new the folks can do with mobile. That innovation is starting to spill into India with Chinese company investments. A year ago, mobile payments in small shops and businesses were ubiquitous only in China, now they're proliferating in Indian cities too. The Western markets are quite…
I don't doubt that there must have been quite a bit of competition before WeChat came into dominance, but is that still true today?
If WeChat is indeed so overwhelmingly dominant in people's lives in China, what strategies do the startups there use to compete with WeChat's core offerings like chat, social networking, payments, and to what degrees of success? Or do startups their just accept WeChat as a piece of infrastructure and try to innovate by building things on top of their platform instead of competing against them directly?
Re: On Growing: Lessons from the Story of WeChat
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
often, they are very fast deleted from your Moments (Wall), heck is you use sensitive keyword they won't be even delivered to the other party in PRIVATE message, so much for this amazing messenger we should look up to
Big government intervention is not the app's fault.
But could it be part of the reasons for its success ?
Re: On Growing: Lessons from the Story of WeChat
#67"WeChat defies the popular belief that growth is all about user growth. Instead they think about growth as increasing value (e.g., the number of tasks WeChat can do in the daily lives of users). Unlike other social products, WeChat does not only measure growth by number of users or messages sent. Instead they also focus on measuring how deeply is the product engaged in every aspect of daily life (e.g., the number of…
it's not hard, let government block all your international competitors and you will see astonishing growth in brainwashed spoon-fed population only people amazed by wechat are those who never lived in China next time - Democratic party would like to repeat success of CCP, they get 100% of votes! same goes for railways, all companies in liberalized European market are crying tears and wanna go learn from Chinese state…
Companies maybe, their customers is a different story.
Re: On Growing: Lessons from the Story of WeChat
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is ridiculous amount of competition an innovation in the Chinese app market. Every time I visit China, I'm surprised by something new the folks can do with mobile. That innovation is starting to spill into India with Chinese company investments. A year ago, mobile payments in small shops and businesses were ubiquitous only in China, now they're proliferating in Indian cities too. The Western markets are quite…
I don't doubt that there must have been quite a bit of competition before WeChat came into dominance, but is that still true today? If WeChat is indeed so overwhelmingly dominant in people's lives in China, what strategies do the startups there use to compete with WeChat's core offerings like chat, social networking, payments, and to what degrees of success? Or do startups their just accept WeChat as a piece of infra…
Wechat controls social connection. It is like you cannot compete with Facebook on social as well here. So, you have to cooperate with them.
Re: On Growing: Lessons from the Story of WeChat
#69Having lived in China for 6 months I can say: if you build a mobile OS to just run WeChat embedded. It would work for 90% of what average users (so no, not you here on HN) want from a phone. Seriously. you can message, voice chat, call, video call, order plane tickets, split bills, order stuff online, buy movie tickets, pay utility bills, share photo's like FB timewall, create publics chatrooms, pay in physical store…
> Seriously. you can message, voice chat, call, video call, order plane tickets, split bills, order stuff online, buy movie tickets, pay utility bills, share photo's like FB timewall, create publics chatrooms, pay in physical stores and so much more. ...All of that is handled within the app's runtime? (I would find it incredibly surprising if it did not hand off at least some of those to the phone layer.) Or if it is…
Wechat embedded a browser in itself. In that since it is more like Chrome Web Store.
Re: On Growing: Lessons from the Story of WeChat
#70"WeChat defies the popular belief that growth is all about user growth. Instead they think about growth as increasing value (e.g., the number of tasks WeChat can do in the daily lives of users). Unlike other social products, WeChat does not only measure growth by number of users or messages sent. Instead they also focus on measuring how deeply is the product engaged in every aspect of daily life (e.g., the number of…
> 100 times this. I can't think of a single large Western consumer software company who can actually think like that.
I'm pretty sure execs from Google/Facebook/Apple think like this, it's just you don't read about it on TechCrunch, nor do they publicize it to their investors.