
Ask China: How immersive is WeChat into your lifestyle? - erbdex
&gt; &quot;You can use WeChat to buy a movie ticket, check the air quality, pay for street food, publish articles, report an incident to the police, release an app, order groceries, connect to Wi-Fi, check the queue time for a restaurant, open an online store, add money to your phone plan, donate to charity, find a lost child, and become an internet celebrity. When I’m in China, I can’t imagine living without WeChat for a day. And I’m not unusual.&quot;<p>Now WeChat is really big and I understand that. But is the above an exaggeration or do most Chinese actually spend upto 30% of their smartphone time within the super-app. Have been getting mixed reviews from my Chinese friends.<p>What do you(and people around you) use it for?
======
turingbook
WeChat integrated everything:

\- Blogging platform? Yes. there are public accounts for enterprises and
individuals to publish articles or videos.

\- BBS? Yes. there are groups to connect every social circles for you. Every
circles. Groups for little family(wife and children), bigger family(plus my
parents), even bigger family(plus my brothers and sisters)... Groups for
classmates of primary schools, secondary school and high school and
universities. Groups for various working circles, groups for various special
interests circles.

\- Twitter or Instagram or Periscope? Yes. There is friends circle for it. I
have thousands of connections on Wechat, and tens of thousands of followers on
Twitter, hundreds of thousands of followers on Weibo. But more likes or
comments (and from guys I know and real) on WeChat.

\- And services you can imagine: Tickets for films, taxi hailing, food or
flower delivery, online shopping...

I rarely bring cash or credit cards with me these days. I can pay nearly for
everything everywhere with WeChat.

WeChat is for mobile phone as Windows for PC or browser for Web. Actually much
more than that.

In China, you can find QR codes everywhere. And the first response for that is
open WeChat.

------
wingerlang
Is 30% a number you think is high? It seems perfectly normal to me, I probably
spend at LEAST 75% of my smartphone time in the reddit client. The rest is
probably shared between my IM clients.

I would bet that most people use WeChat for it's social stuff (IMing or doing
'timeline' stuff) apart from the "novelty" stuff like the ones listed.

If we think of WeChat as Instagram, FB and IM all in one where those aren't
the "main apps" for just that, I think 30% seems extremely low.

Obviously I am not Chinese, nor do I live there. And my only experience with
WeChat is a couple of months in Malaysia (where it is the main client).

Where I live LINE is the big app, it includes similar stuff like paying etc
but I never saw/heard of anyone using them. It is mainly IMing and using the
timeline. But we've got FB/IG as well so people use those. But I still think
LINE have more than 30% of the peoples attention based on what I see.

~~~
erbdex
> I probably spend at LEAST 75% of my smartphone time in the reddit client.

The pitfalls for asking HN users. =) On a more serious note, could you
elaborate on the LINE users around you- specifically in terms of what they use
it for?

~~~
wingerlang
Mainly for chatting/group chatting when organising events with friends/etc. I
also know that people sell clothes a lot, and I personally know that real
estate agents use it to post apartments etc.

~~~
rahimnathwani
"real estate agents use it to post apartments etc."

Real estate agents in China use WeChat that way, too.

------
rahimnathwani
"do most Chinese actually spend upto 30% of their smartphone time within the
super-app"

Yes. I'm not Chinese, but live in China. 80% of my smartphone time is in:

\- Gmail

\- Yarn (an HN reader)

\- WeChat

\- Uber

Most Chinese people don't read HN, or use email for non-work purposes. You can
hail a car in WeChat, so they don't need the Uber app, either.

------
android521
If I have to uninstall all apps and only allow to use one. That will be
wechat.

------
zhte415
buy a movie ticket \- Done

check the air quality \- This isn't built into the client, but via accounts
you can add. Inferior to a dedicated app which almost everyone has

pay for street food \- Done, but scanning a QR code and getting confirmation
that's been scanned is more time consuming than handing over a 10 Yuan note
and getting change

publish articles \- Done. There's also a microblog feature which has far
surpassed Weibo, the twitter-like app

report an incident to the police \- Not done but see the usefulness. Non-
emergency things reported as text could really help police workflow here

release an app \- Done. Banking stuff too, and a lot more is coming in 3rd
party financial services

order groceries \- Done, kinda. Order lunch and get it delivered.

connect to Wi-Fi \- Confused. The phone connects to WiFi, WeChat uses the
phone's WiFi connection

check the queue time for a restaurant \- Not done.

open an online store \- Not done. Do you mean use the microblog function to
advertise wares; that's common? various middleware linking to escro services
etc?

add money to your phone plan \- Done. In most cities, all utility bills can be
paid.

donate to charity \- Well, you can donate/send funds to anyone

find a lost child \- Not done

become an internet celebrity \- Not done

WeChat has achieved a critical mass surpassing even QQ (they're made by the
same company). Not through absolute destruction; QQ is still big on both phone
and PC while the PC app for WeChat is limited compared to PC-based QQ.

I mentioned banking above. While WeChat offers payment services at the moment,
it's seen by many as a toy compared to AliPay. This will change over the next
6-12 months as behind the scenes Tencent are courting banks (and others I'm
sure, but banking sector is my thing) about advantages WeChat offers, for
example tracking success of marketing campaigns - instant 'big data' feedback.

Some more things I use WeChat for, almost exclusively.

Office circle \- Everyone in my office has to be in a circle where office
announcements are made, from at the weekend 'is anyone in, I forget my access
card' to sharing teambuilding photos/video instantly to starting a chat
between a few people by creating a new group chat

International calls \- Video call a colleague in Singapore? Use WeChat and
office WiFi. Free and easy.

Helpline \- Instant texting, send pictures, video, chat. No 'run in
background, share screen' function as far as I know yet, only share via
camera. Not technically hard given everything else.

Events \- Subscribe to accounts offering new events. I have no idea why
Tencent have not yet added calendar functionality.

Discount cards/offers \- Shared socially or from subscribed accounts

Lucky money \- Like sending money, but randomly distributed. Common for
teambuilding

LinkedIn/Facebook \- Integrates these services on a very basic level

Other stuff that it does:

Stickers

Look Around \- feature for people nearby that are bored and want to chat/hook
up;

Shake \- for people 1000s of km away that are bored and want to chat/hook up;

Bottle \- feature so if you are bored and want to chat/get something off your
chest/hook up you can throw a bottle and someone can reply.

\--

tl/dr At least 30% of smartphone time in China is on WeChat. Often in travel
time. But probably not chatting. Reading a post/posts, watching a video
someone linked, browsing online shops, it's just in a massive payment &
contact-linked type iFrame.

A: "What's the first thing you do when you wake up?" B: "Open my eyes" A: "The
second?" B: "Check WeiXin."

~~~
rahimnathwani
"connect to Wi-Fi - Confused. The phone connects to WiFi, WeChat uses the
phone's WiFi connection"

In some restaurants, you have to scan their printed WeChat QR code and follow
their official account, before the wifi will connect. I'm not sure how it
works, but I've used it a couple of times, and it was a smooth process.

"open an online store - Not done. Do you mean use the microblog function to
advertise wares; that's common? various middleware linking to escro services
etc?"

You can build a store as an HTML5 app, embedded within a channel. The store
will get access to identity and payments via WeChat's APIs. There are also
sellers that use their regular account. They publish new items in their
'Moments' feed, which anyone connected o them can browse. If you want to buy,
you send them a message with your address, and send them a person-to-person
payment via WeChat payments.

"WeChat has achieved a critical mass surpassing even QQ (they're made by the
same company)."

I remember there being a very smooth migration process. When I started using
WeChat, I was quickly able to add my existing QQ contacts. So I just stopped
using QQ.

"Office circle"

Yup. I'm in a few of those informal groups with colleagues. Also there's a
group for people that live in our apartment block.

"International calls - Video call a colleague in Singapore? Use WeChat and
office WiFi."

Yup. If one of you is in China, then WeChat quality might be better than
FaceTime.

"Stickers"

I use these pretty often. I used to think sticker were just for young people.

