On Growing: Lessons from the Story of WeChat • Hacker News Board

Re: On Growing: Lessons from the Story of WeChat

#121

Post by thewhitetulip » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 6:19 AM UTC

lewisl9029 wrote: post #80

I remember watching this video a while ago by Nathan Freitas on the ability of the Chinese government to inspect, censor and control private communications through cooperation with apps like WeChat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEJGqNf2rgk In it, Nathan brings up a very alarming point in that Chinese communication apps like WeChat have extremely robust inspection and censorship features built-in to the app, that w…

I am an Indian and I don't see wechat gaining foothold in India, here, people still use whatsapp and cash.

People use paytm for paying bills, the taxman's website to pay taxes, amazon for online shopping, don't think wechat has the power/influence/differentiating product in India.

Re: On Growing: Lessons from the Story of WeChat

#122

Post by thewhitetulip » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 6:21 AM UTC

dangrover wrote: post #93

Former WeChat PM here. Good analysis. But annoyed that mot western coverage of the app focuses on the breadth of features/platform stuff and belies the many ways that it's an extremely solid messaging app compared to many. The choices made in the fundamentals (adding friends, creating groups, notifications) are all super well thought out. People using it will use it for communicating with strangers and conducting bus…

Your WeChat experience would be interesting, we can learn so much from it, clearly the app took over the Chinese ecosystem, so you guys did a lot of things right (which nobody has able to replicate).

I would love to talk to you about it!

Re: On Growing: Lessons from the Story of WeChat

#123

Post by gurkendoktor » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 7:07 AM UTC

daveguy wrote: post #7

As 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…

Random high-profile anecdata for why you should NEVER trust a China-approved messenger: http://www.zeit.de/feature/freedom-of-press-china-zhang-miao...

tl;dr Chinese assistant of a German newspaper was arrested for political signalling on WeChat.

This is a tool that has almost certainly been used to find and kill people in lower-profile cases. It's disgusting to see that HN/SV people will never care about that part of tech. This thread makes me feel terrible.

Re: On Growing: Lessons from the Story of WeChat

#124

Post by kalasoo » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:37 AM UTC

There is one important spot the article misses to mention is its extremely great usability among different groups of people. People who are young or old, well-educated or poor, artistic or professional use WeChat as a communication tool.

Unlike many other apps who concentrate on serving young people, business people or colleagues, WeChat is the ultimate solution for me to talk with my classmates, my parents or even a courier who I just meet 3-minutes ago. This makes it stand out from just an app working above the operating system, but a common solution people on mobile just like phone call or messages. This makes WeChat special.

Re: On Growing: Lessons from the Story of WeChat

#125

Post by thewhitetulip » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:38 AM UTC

apexalpha wrote: post #28

Having 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…

I think this is one of the important reason (among others) why wechat picked up, there is no Google in China, not even GPlay.

Re: On Growing: Lessons from the Story of WeChat

#126

Post by seanmcdirmid » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 12:34 PM UTC

rahimnathwani wrote: post #117

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in china for 9 years. I preferred using my unionpay card to buy things (didn't work at the wet market) and had a separate app for didi dache. You don't have to do all one things in wechat if you don't want to (accept maybe wepay), and I prefer not to for myself (wife is a different story). After moving to California from Beijing, I can do all those things easily now online. What wechat offered instead was he…

"After moving to California from Beijing, I can do all those things easily now online." I'd find it hard, in California, to do any of these things: - Send a small payment to a friend (sure, Venmo, but most of my friends don't have Venmo) - Buy movie tickets and choose a seat - Pay in a restaurant without risk of my card being cloned - Pay a water or electricity bill - Share (real time) location with other people (yes…

- I never tried.

- Chinese wife buys movie tickets online all the time, chooses seat if the theater has reserved seating.

- credit cards in America put fraud burden on merchants. This is very different from china (ICBC grumble) and fraudsters in the states will target Chinese using credit cards in the states accordingly.

- online, on autopay.

- iPhone has had that feature for forever.

Re: On Growing: Lessons from the Story of WeChat

#127

Post by seanmcdirmid » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 12:37 PM UTC

rahimnathwani wrote: post #116

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mobile payments aren't so big in the west because they aren't so necessary. Almost every shop in the USA takes cards, the same isn't true in china or many developing markets, but everyone has a phone so let's use the camera and QR codes to get around our lack of infrastructure.

There's something else going on as well, though. People in China will now use Alipay/WeChat to pay at (for example) restaurants even though they have a bank card, and the restaurant can take bank cards. The restaurants increasingly have specialised hardware (maybe part of the same POS terminal that takes bank cards) and aren't using a smartphone to process customers' mobile payments.

True, but is that anymore convenient than card tap? Also, We are seeing QR payments happening in the states also (like at Starbucks) though I honestly don't see the point.

Re: On Growing: Lessons from the Story of WeChat

#128

Post by seanmcdirmid » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 12:38 PM UTC

rahimnathwani wrote: post #118

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try being a foreigner with a unionpay card but lacking a Chinese indentity card number. I heard it's better now, but that requirement was always a bummer for me in trying to do payments online.

That problem was solved (for at least the big banks: ICBC, BoC, CMB, CCB) for WeChat at least 2 years before you left China. For Alipay, it was already solved when I moved to China in 2010.

As recently as last year I had trouble setting up Uber in china because they wanted my Chinese ID number to go along with my Chinese credit card. Thing is, they wouldn't ask if I was using a non Chinese card.

Re: On Growing: Lessons from the Story of WeChat

#129

Post by rahimnathwani » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 1:36 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #128

rahimnathwani wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That problem was solved (for at least the big banks: ICBC, BoC, CMB, CCB) for WeChat at least 2 years before you left China. For Alipay, it was already solved when I moved to China in 2010.

As recently as last year I had trouble setting up Uber in china because they wanted my Chinese ID number to go along with my Chinese credit card. Thing is, they wouldn't ask if I was using a non Chinese card.

I have both Alipay and Baidu Wallet connected to my Uber China account. I haven't tried linking a Chinese bank card directly to Uber, but I don't have any reason to do that.

Re: On Growing: Lessons from the Story of WeChat

#130

Post by rahimnathwani » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 1:48 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #127

rahimnathwani wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something else going on as well, though. People in China will now use Alipay/WeChat to pay at (for example) restaurants even though they have a bank card, and the restaurant can take bank cards. The restaurants increasingly have specialised hardware (maybe part of the same POS terminal that takes bank cards) and aren't using a smartphone to process customers' mobile payments.

True, but is that anymore convenient than card tap? Also, We are seeing QR payments happening in the states also (like at Starbucks) though I honestly don't see the point.

I've not seen contactless card payments in China. I imagine both businesses and consumers would be worried about fraud. Quick payments with a mobile wallet (where the retailer scans a dynamic QR code on your phone) feel safer, as you need to explicitly go to that screen, and you get immediate notification on any transaction on your account.