41–50 of 104 posts
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).
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This video from NYT explains it what makes WeChat revolutionary as a platform: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAesMQ6VtK8 tl;dw The revolution alludes to the fact that one app is taking over everything from social networking, mobile payments, food, ticket sales, ride-hailing, financial products, bill payments, and much more.
I watched the video. I still don't get it. Why would I want one app and company to own all of that? I don't even want one phone manufacturer/platform to own my messaging - I much prefer platform-agnostic Whatsapp over iPhone-only iMessage. Already the smartphone platform I use can do all of social networking, mobile payments, food, ticket sales, ride-hailing, bill payments, etc on ONE device. I just don't see what th…
This isn't about whether you, one person, wants this. It's about the nearly a billion people that already live in it. Good for you that you prefer an open app ecosystem, I'm sure there are other people that feel the same way. But in China that approach has pretty much already lost.
WeChat's "App Revolution" is by no means a technical revolution, as several other commenters have pointed out. There's nothing new with embedding a web browser, nor with SSO, or integrated payments. The revolution is the fact that this is an app with an install base approaching one billion users (846M monthly active users as of Q3'16). Anything they do is potentially revolutionary by virtue of sheer scale. They are a…
Calling a competitor to Apple, Facebook and Co "unstoppable juggernaut" is sarcasm, isn't it?
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This video from NYT explains it what makes WeChat revolutionary as a platform: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAesMQ6VtK8 tl;dw The revolution alludes to the fact that one app is taking over everything from social networking, mobile payments, food, ticket sales, ride-hailing, financial products, bill payments, and much more.
I watched the video. I still don't get it. Why would I want one app and company to own all of that? I don't even want one phone manufacturer/platform to own my messaging - I much prefer platform-agnostic Whatsapp over iPhone-only iMessage. Already the smartphone platform I use can do all of social networking, mobile payments, food, ticket sales, ride-hailing, bill payments, etc on ONE device. I just don't see what th…
Because one entity can control they way it's all integrated, they can bring UI consistency and convenience by enforcing some degree of feature de-duplication. E.g. Single sign-on, and a shared e-wallet.
>Having APIs for apps on a device to talk to each other allows for competition and variety - won't it obviously win out?
Nope, there's no guarantee. There are benefits to both approaches. Different people have different priorities, normies don't care this much about freedom.
If this is the future you want, you need to fight for it.
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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?
There may be several possible steady states, one might be a pervasive totalitarian surveillance state and another might be a liberal democracy with individual freedoms and a system of checks and ballances. But while both such systems exist in the world, it's possible that one or the other might establish dominance over the other. In fact one or the other winning out seems inevitable in the long term.
So as long as an oppressive totalitarian surveillance state exists in the world, there is a risk that it will become the steady state for the whole world. China has such a system. WhatsApp is thoroughly subverted by the Chinese government and is an integral part of their surveillance and censorship apparatus. It might even become the key component that enables complete and permanent stability for the Chinese totalitarian system.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This video from NYT explains it what makes WeChat revolutionary as a platform: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAesMQ6VtK8 tl;dw The revolution alludes to the fact that one app is taking over everything from social networking, mobile payments, food, ticket sales, ride-hailing, financial products, bill payments, and much more.
I watched the video. I still don't get it. Why would I want one app and company to own all of that? I don't even want one phone manufacturer/platform to own my messaging - I much prefer platform-agnostic Whatsapp over iPhone-only iMessage. Already the smartphone platform I use can do all of social networking, mobile payments, food, ticket sales, ride-hailing, bill payments, etc on ONE device. I just don't see what th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Then imagine yourself using one of the apps contributing data to that system, even if from outside the country. Oh well, maybe we're already using many of them and we didn't notice.
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
Apple Inc. isn't taking this development lightly. It even prohibited WeChat from using the term "app" as applied to mini programs. Glad to see Apple once again using its tight grip on its developers to look out for Apple.
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.
If you think about similar products on the market (fb messenger, WhatsApp, even Line or Kakao Talk in Japan/Korea), this is quite unheard of, because WeChat is taking up everyone's time on the phone. Other apps just simply cannot divide a user's attention out of WeChat the app, on a smartphone. And just because of that, most of the businesses and companies start to live off of wechat's user base and features. For exa…
Well, not me. I'm Chinese and I hate hate hate WeChat. It's a cluttered, privacy intrusive app and a very close eco system.
WeChat became this popular is by no means because of the app per se, but because of it is made and heavily promoted by Tencent.
Before WeChat we had much more elegant and simple apps like Talkbox and WhatsApp.