
When One App Rules Them All: The Case of WeChat and Mobile in China - rxin
https://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/
======
girzel
I live in China, and resisted using wechat for a year or so, until it became
clear that I was essentially removing myself from the majority of China's
online world. I'm still highly annoyed when I get seven minutes' worth of
30-second voice clips from someone, or when people insist on using it as a
replacement for email (essentially, using it as a replacement for all
internet-based communication, period), but it's impossible to ignore.

And I'll admit, finding the wallet thing was a bit of an "a ha" moment for me.

And lastly, it became obvious that the _only_ way to promote my company and
its business to a Chinese audience was to run an official wechat account for
it.

So there we are. I just got a new phone, and wechat was the first thing I
installed.

~~~
girzel
Seriously, the wallet thing is both amazing and terrifying. Apparently the
only thing standing between me and sending all my worldly wealth to a wechat
contact is a six-digit PIN. Two-factor whut? Given what I know of the Wild-
West Chinese internet, this is deeply worrying.

~~~
zhte415
> Seriously, the wallet thing is both amazing and terrifying. Apparently the
> only thing standing between me and sending all my worldly wealth to a wechat
> contact is a six-digit PIN.

Indeed. My internet banking account (that my employer gives me) has the same
PIN as internet password. Change the PIN at the ATM, and the internet banking
password also changes. Change the internet PIN, and the ATM pin changes. Damn,
they're the same.

BUT...

Do as locals do and maintains multiple bank accounts with different banks, and
multiple credit cards with different banks.

This is not unique to China, but is also the case here. And it doesn't come
from internet security, just from 'this is how it has always been done' via
various banking promotions and access to local branch (China's banking network
is, by policy, branch and region based). But it works here. I know no one that
even keeps all their money in the same account, let along allows access to the
same account via WeChat.

The big issue: WeChat is Tencent's bid to become a bank with full suite
financial services. It will work against monoliths like Visa and MasterCard,
even UnionPay. Because they don't bother with charging a transaction fee. What
merchant doesn't like that?

~~~
walterbell
Without a transaction fee, where do they make money?

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santoshalper
It sounds like a world where AOL won and we all accessed the internet through
keywords and paid everything through AOL, or very similar to France's old
Minitel, except for mobile.

Having everything in one app is interesting if only because it offers some
powerful integration opportunities, but otherwise this sounds like a proto-
Internet for a developing economy.

$5 says they evolve past this in the next 3-5 years and their app ecosystem
looks a lot more like ours.

~~~
maxwin
Or the mobile messaging ecosystem in US will look a lot more like wechat in
3-5 years. China can be ahead in some areas.

~~~
GauntletWizard
If china is ahead in this, then humanity might as well pack it in. China's
sandbox model works well when you've got a few hundred million uneducated
peasants, but an educated populous (Which china is having more success
stopping than I care to admit) wants diversity; It wants options, differing
opinions, choices that cater to them, not to what people want to offer them.

~~~
simonh
China has an educated urban population about equivalent in size to the entire
population of the US, and they're all using WeChat. My wife is a Nurse, has a
2:1 degree and although born in China has lived and worked in the UK since
2000 and she uses WeChat all the time, as do our kids. Educated non-techies
don't want diversity, they want functionality and community.

~~~
davedx
Yup. My English sister has been using it because she gets better quality voice
than Skype. Maybe Wechat is winning because it's the better product.

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doctorpangloss
I think a great deal is being attributed to "leapfrogging" which should
instead be attributed to idiosyncrasies in the Chinese market. Like that it's
big, and that a great deal of software is bundled.

For starters, surely there are other places around the world with nation-
dominating highly-integrated platform apps. I mean, they name LINE and
KakaoTalk. Is their point that China is 3x bigger than Japan and 10x bigger
than Korea? Those factors are certainly accurate with respect to their
national PPP (3.7x and 9.9x), and explains the data they observe really well.
But Japan didn't have a leapfrogging experience, as they claim. Korea is a bit
more complicated, but nonetheless, not cut-and-dried.

Why WeChat in particular? The other apps compared—LINE and KakaoTalk—arguably
became dominant in their countries the same way WeChat did: bundling. It just
comes with your phone. By that logic, do we label the Apple App Store, bundled
with every iPhone, a "service" that takes a 30% cut of many of the
transactions that occur there? Again, the App Store absolutely fulfills all
the roles described in the article, notwithstanding their particular points
about UI.

A16Z just isn't getting rich off Apple, so they're not going around hyping up
an arguably the platform to end all platforms. Apple made $4.8 billion in
iTunes and software on 1 billion iOS devices total by Q1 2015. It's not
WeChat's estimated "$7 ARPU", but honestly, I bet Apple's is actually higher.

~~~
rahimnathwani
"became dominant in their countries the same way WeChat did: bundling"

This is false. WeChat became big because it is a good app AND because it
provided a seamless on-ramp for users of QQ (the previous dominant instant
messenger, also owned by Tencent).

~~~
jsprogrammer
Giving away $81 million in cash probably didn't hurt either.

~~~
rahimnathwani
This was in February 2015. WeChat hit ~400MM MAU about a year before that.
You've got the causality the wrong way around.

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nichtich
The beauty of WeChat is not it has tons of features, it's the tons of features
are well hidden. As another user said, it's very natural to have used WeChat
for quite some time and doesn't know all these existed. People always say it's
not just a chat app, but if you use it just for chat then it's a pretty good
one with good voice and video chat quality, supports group chat well and has a
clean UI. All the other features are opt-in, hidden in several level of menus.
There are no flashy confusing buttons, no daily reminder asking you to try
some new feature, no distraction. For me and my friends who has long abandoned
the bloated and flashy QQ for simple gtalk (before google got banned), WeChat
is a breath of fresh air.

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IIAOPSW
I am in China right this instant and (like everyone) I have wechat on my
phone. Perhaps the services mentioned don't have much use/appeal to expats,
but I have never heard of any of the stuff mentioned in this article. Wechat
to me is just a texting app because data is cheaper than texts (thanks China
Mobile).

At first I couldn't even find any of the features mentioned. some of the stuff
(taxi's, planes) are hidden in some submenu called "bank cards" which I
originally thought was for unlocking emoji and stuff. Perhaps I need to run an
update, but I can't even find a "sub app store" of 3rd party verified
accounts.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Wechat to me is just a texting app because data is cheaper than texts
> (thanks China Mobile).

Well, I used China Unicom, but I noticed something similar. I got a SIM card
about two years ago with "no internet plan". It turned out to have data
connectivity anyway, so I just used it for that. Every month I'd get messages
stating "you have used X amount of data, of which X is in excess of your
monthly limit". And yet... I was spending much less money on phone service
than even the cheapest official data plan, so I left it that way. Any idea how
this sort of situation came about?

~~~
IIAOPSW
I have no idea. TBH I haven't paid my phone bill in a while. I don't know how
I even have phone service.

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jgbond
The post fails to mention that WeChat is protected from competition against
other major global apps. If Google, Facebook, et al, were allowed to operate
freely in China, WeChat would get picked apart.

Yes, there are a lot of cool things about WeChat and certain features that it
arguably does better than its foreign counterparts, but it is still a mess. It
is slow, cluttered, bloated, and full of crimes against design. The lack of
competitive pressure really shows.

I imagine that if and when some real competition shows up, WeChat will evolve
into a full-blown mobile OS.

~~~
LiweiZ
Yes, quality alternatives and things exported from other cultures are very
important here. Like I indicated in my comment MSN was the choice for groups
more open to western cultures. Communication, sociality and tools used could
be very culture sensitive.

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zhanwei
I like how "official account" are lightweight apps. They are like the web with
push notifications, online identity, and payment integrated into the web
browser. The usual web can fulfil the features of official accounts in theory,
but it's awkward. 1\. push notification -> email 2\. online identity -> login
to fb, twitter, github, or website specific login 3\. payment -> authorize
paypal, bitcoin, amazon, bank

Whenever u want to do something on the web (e.g. buy a ticket), u have to
figure out how to login (worse if you have to create a new account), how to
make payment, and check your emails for confirmations and updates. That's
enough friction to make a user hunt for alternatives. On top of that, the
website make not work well on your mobile phone.

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reuven
I've traveled to China about 2-3 times each year for the last few years. I
strongly recommend that people who travel to China install WeChat. Not only is
it guaranteed to work in China, but it gives you instant street cred when
you're there.

It's very, very common for people to say to me, "Wow, you have WeChat? You are
so Chinese!" (I don't look Chinese at all, and my Mandarin is still at an
elementary level, so this is clearly a cultural compliment!) It's the easiest,
fastest, and cheapest thing you can do to make a connection with any hosts,
friends, or business colleagues you meet there.

WeChat does indeed have tons of features. I've used it for personal and group
communication, but also for video chats (when Skype went crazy on me), and it
was solid. My Chinese teacher and I use it to exchange messages and photos,
either when I'm visiting China or when we're outside of class time. I'm on a
few groups, and it's a surprisingly clean and easy-to-use program for group
chat.

I also use WhatsApp, and while that has a much nicer interface, it's not
obvious to me that it's superior to WeChat.

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LiweiZ
Isn't it just users with QQ numbers pick a slim version (which is more adapted
to mobile use cases) of QQ on mobile devices? QQ number is something almost
everyone on internet owns back in early 2000s in China. The number became the
utility. As long as one has internet connection, one does not need a phone
number to get connected.

I don't like WeChat. But that's what you have to use since that's where
everyone you know are. MSN once had the chance to complete with QQ, but it
gave up. And everybody had no better choice but picked up their old QQ number.

From another perspective, it's also accompanied with the rise of local
business, which shifted the attitude towards local society recognition.

Money makes then ugly now pretty.

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omouse
It seems like the opportunity here for Firefox OS and Android in the future is
to have an API layer that's even simpler and allow for apps that are lighter
weight. As I read the article I thought, hey wouldn't it be nice if my
apartment building let me reserve the tennis court or report issues with an
app? But then I thought...it would take them 3 months to put together
something that just barely works and then another 9 months to make something
that works well and it'll probably still have a shitty user interface.

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reedlaw
WeChat is so much better than other messaging platforms that I'm willing to
get on it in spite of privacy concerns. I have never noticed an ad and I'm in
complete control over what messages I receive. It just feels so much better
than Facebook or Twitter where it's obvious that my data is the product. I
have no idea what kind of things WeChat does with its massive amounts of data,
but at least they have legitimate revenue streams that don't involve shoving
unwanted content in front of me.

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strzzz
I guess by using this app, you basically give up all your info to chinese
authorities. I would never used that

~~~
tellthetruth1
Just downloaded this app and activated it. Now I can give all my info to
chinese government instead of NSA.

~~~
maaku
Pretty sure you're still giving it to the NSA too.

~~~
tellthetruth1
I am a equal opportunity app user. ;-)

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erikb
I use Wechat for years. I was totally unaware of its power. Speechless.

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djyde
At least Wechat had pushed two things powerfully, one is QR Code, the other
one is HTML5.

~~~
antimagic
Who in their right mind uses QR codes!?! As a human you have no idea where
that thing is pointing, so why on earth would you trust it? At least with a
URL I have half a chance of knowing if I'm about to be hit by a phishing
attack.

~~~
erikb
A) Trust is not an issue in these regards in China. B) when your chat app
generates a QR code that the chat app of the friend or the payment tool from a
shop uses it's quite clear what the QR code means. It's not that there are
random QR Codes everywhere on the street and you have to trust them. If you
want to add me, I don't tell you my nick name but just show you my QR code on
my phone and you add through your app, not the web browser.

~~~
antimagic
Oh no. Here's how an attack might go. I'm a shop assistant and show you a QR
code to scan to make a purchase. Unknown to you, I'm not actually showing you
the real app, but a fake app with fake QR code that will redirect you to a
malicious website, which in it's turn will load the proper URL _after_ having
executed an unpatched zero-day on your device. You are sad because your device
has just been pwned.

You are at the mercy of the source of the QR code, with no real way of being
able to validate it before scanning.

~~~
EliRivers
What you say is true, and makes no difference. QR codes are very popular and
in very common use in China.

~~~
djyde
Yup, now when I wanna pay for some drink, I only need to take out my mobile,
then open wechat, then scan the QR code showed on the vending machine screen.

Like this: [http://i.imgur.com/mlIr3QP.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/mlIr3QP.jpg)

~~~
tellthetruth1
Vending machines in the US only take coins, like a post-apocalyptic stone age
world. So ahead of time...

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cpp098
Wechat is shit. why Line has been blocked in China?

~~~
desdiv
The usual bogeyman, "terrorism":

[https://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/07/us-southkorea-
chi...](https://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/07/us-southkorea-china-apps-
idUSKBN0G709E20140807)

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wangii
Mobile IM is the new browser.

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zhte415
The elephant in the room is WeChat and mobile. Has been for 3 years.

