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WeChat’s world

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Re: WeChat’s world

#91

Post by Zarel »

Trufa wrote: post #48

Has anyone criticizing it actually tried weChat? I know that there are better ways to do things, and you don't have to accept the "Chinese way" of doing things, but that's mainly politics, and yes there ARE a lot of privacy concerns, but, and there's a big but. Technically speaking, the app is amazing. I recently used it to talk to my girlfriend while she's in China and seriously, it's the best (face to face) communi…

I'm Chinese and my relatives and friends use it, so I have.

I personally strongly dislike it because you have to set a phone as your primary device. And if you break your phone, all your message history is gone.

In theory it has a desktop client, but the desktop client sucks. It requires you to use your phone to scan a QR code (which is currently failing for me with an "Unable to find (3,-1)" error).

They only recently added the ability on the desktop client to save message history (before, it would be wiped every time you log in). Even now, I can't see messages received while my computer isn't connected to WeChat (e.g. when my computer is off).

In general, anything that makes me use a phone keyboard instead of a computer keyboard to talk to people is a no-go for me.

So yeah, I dislike it for reasons that have nothing to do with the privacy. It has "better" privacy than most apps since it doesn't do cloud message storage unless you tell it to, but I'd rather it did like Facebook or Hangouts or Skype.

Re: WeChat’s world

#92

Post by 794CD01 »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #78
794CD01 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If tech people dream about a product that real people have no desire to use, is it really the consumers' fault for "liking the wrong things", or is it the inventors' fault for dreaming about a product that doesn't meet people's needs? Assuming that the rest of the world is wrong because it's moving in a direction you personally disagree with doesn't make you courageous or visionary, it makes you Principal Skinner: ht…

OTOH, is it always true that "the masses" do what's best for the individuals that comprise the masses, even when measured by their own standards? If so, I'd imagine we'd have no use for a word like visionary. Reminds me of the famous quote from Henry Ford, that if he'd asked the people what they wanted, they'd have answered "faster horses".

Just because the masses want the wrong thing doesn't mean that your different thing is better. The way I see the difference is that, after saying that, Ford gave them automobiles. He didn't fail to sell people ferret-poop rockets and then blame them for wanting faster horses.

Re: WeChat’s world

#93

Post by IAgreeBut »

Trufa wrote: post #48

Has anyone criticizing it actually tried weChat? I know that there are better ways to do things, and you don't have to accept the "Chinese way" of doing things, but that's mainly politics, and yes there ARE a lot of privacy concerns, but, and there's a big but. Technically speaking, the app is amazing. I recently used it to talk to my girlfriend while she's in China and seriously, it's the best (face to face) communi…

WeChat has preferential QOS guarantees through the Great Firewall. Due to that alone, its miles and miles ahead of any other voice/video chat app. Even if the feature set sucked, it would be worth using simply because it works so much better than everything else. It works better than the phone, in my experience, for voice chat.

But using it between say two people in north, central, and/or south america? Eh. There's some neat things about it, but losing the big firewall advantage, or the local market advantages (payments integration, third party app ecosystem integration for things like didi or even silly social toys) its hard to see why I would use it over the other messengers.

Re: WeChat’s world

#94

Post by fjabre »

Trufa wrote: post #48

Has anyone criticizing it actually tried weChat? I know that there are better ways to do things, and you don't have to accept the "Chinese way" of doing things, but that's mainly politics, and yes there ARE a lot of privacy concerns, but, and there's a big but. Technically speaking, the app is amazing. I recently used it to talk to my girlfriend while she's in China and seriously, it's the best (face to face) communi…

I'm glad this is the top comment. I was in China recently and was amazed by how functional and well developed the WeChat app is.

I'm happy the Chinese government blocked Facebook, if only because it gave my intellect pause to think about what happens when Facebook isn't allowed to use its network effect to its advantage to snuff out any other fledgling social network that would challenge it. Maybe we should take a second look at network effect and the unfair monopolistic power it provides to companies like Facebook who don't really have to innovate because of their global dominance and established network effect.

Re: WeChat’s world

#95

Post by nullnilvoid »

morgante wrote: post #72
nullnilvoid wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on the bugs you found during the weeks? I have used it years and have yet found any bug.

It was 2 years ago, so I don't really recall most of the bugs. I do remember struggling mightily when I somehow lost access to my account. Restoring access required opening a janky web view with a form that wouldn't load properly on my iPhone so I had to borrow a friend's Android phone to try. Then the form was entirely in Chinese with no internationalization/translation available.

I suggest you give it another try. 2 years is a long time. At that time, English support was not good. It is much better now (I am using the English version). It is years ahead of WhatsApp, FB Messenger in terms of stability and features.

Re: WeChat’s world

#96

Post by unclebucknasty »

794CD01 wrote: post #92
unclebucknasty wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH, is it always true that "the masses" do what's best for the individuals that comprise the masses, even when measured by their own standards? If so, I'd imagine we'd have no use for a word like visionary. Reminds me of the famous quote from Henry Ford, that if he'd asked the people what they wanted, they'd have answered "faster horses".

Just because the masses want the wrong thing doesn't mean that your different thing is better. The way I see the difference is that, after saying that, Ford gave them automobiles. He didn't fail to sell people ferret-poop rockets and then blame them for wanting faster horses.

Well, you'd originally asked whether it's the customer or inventor's "fault" and pretty much suggested that it was the inventor's. I was, merely indicating that it can go either way, depending on the scenario.

But, yeah, if you further qualify it by saying that the inventor was trying to sell ferret-poop rockets, then that marks a scenario that's pretty clear-cut.

Re: WeChat’s world

#97

Post by plaguuuuuu »

BoorishBears wrote: post #47
millettjon wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

freedom

As a thought experiment, imagine a bird cage that gets larger as a bird approaches its sides. Even if you put a bird that migrates in this cage, eventually the cage would reach some max size where cage size > maximum flight range of the bird. If the cage is so large that the bird doesn't try to escape it, does the bird care that it's in a cage? Is there really a difference between the cage and freedom? You can't get…

People already experience the cage. Plenty of my friends don't want to run the FB messenger app and give it permissions on their phones, but FB forces people to use the app on mobile and disables the function on the website.

Same deal with third party chat apps. I have to install 3-4 separate apps to talk to different people because everyone's using a separate app and there's no integration between them, they don't speak the same protocol. And I would much rather not have WhatsApp but if I deleted it I'd have to leave a few group chats.

Re: WeChat’s world

#98

Post by yyhhsj0521 »

tluyben2 wrote: post #34
lhopki01 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing you need to be careful about is comparing a service in China with the service outside of China. For example Skype in China because of the monitoring put on it disconnects all the time where it would be fine outside of China. Services like WeChat have an inbuilt advantage in that their connectivity isn't as interfered with in the same way that western apps are.

Skype doesn't work in the west (I live 5 months per year in Spain and the rest I work in UK/NL/China/HK/Aus; it is no different in other places hence I like wechat which works well everywhere) either on bad connections; it won't connect or will be very slow/unreliable at sending even small pieces of text, let alone images.

I agree.. My Skype is always unhappy to send images for me. Whereever I am.

Re: WeChat’s world

#100

Post by 794CD01 »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #96
794CD01 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because the masses want the wrong thing doesn't mean that your different thing is better. The way I see the difference is that, after saying that, Ford gave them automobiles. He didn't fail to sell people ferret-poop rockets and then blame them for wanting faster horses.

Well, you'd originally asked whether it's the customer or inventor's "fault" and pretty much suggested that it was the inventor's. I was, merely indicating that it can go either way, depending on the scenario. But, yeah, if you further qualify it by saying that the inventor was trying to sell ferret-poop rockets, then that marks a scenario that's pretty clear-cut.

It's no further than my initial statement, it was just clarifying how your quote applied to the situation. The inventor is the one at fault if they envision a product people don't want. That's all. Maybe you can blame their marketing team too.
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