
Creative Thinking That Fueled WeChat’s Success - razin
https://hbr.org/2019/10/the-kind-of-creative-thinking-that-fueled-wechats-success
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rfwhyte
Sure seems an awfully uncritical fluff-piece for an app that's such a central
part of China's dystopian surveillance state. Unknown scores of people have
been arrested and detained indefinitely for things they've posted on WeChat.

Also, if WeChat's success is due to it's so called "Grand design" thinking and
not its history of blatantly copying features from other apps, nor from
Chinese protectionism in its home market, why isn't it popular outside of
china with anyone other than the Chinese diaspora? Seems if its such an
innovative app it should have scores of users in other countries.

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LiquidSky
> there is a perception that they have succeeded through copycat strategies,
> and have benefited from Facebook and Google being blocked from operating in
> the country.

This fluff piece goes on and on about the "Grand Design" but does nothing to
address these two criticisms. WeChat did, in fact, begin as a blatant copy of
WhatsApp:

[https://news.cgtn.com/news/30596a4e78677a6333566d54/share_p....](https://news.cgtn.com/news/30596a4e78677a6333566d54/share_p.html)

And maybe WeChat "didn’t get an easy ride", but it sure helps to have all
major existing competitors locked out of your market.

