The govt blocking the access of similar foreign apps (Whatsapp, Skype etc.) to the Chinese people has some role to play in the popularity of it. But yeah nice to see "Made in China first, for Chinese first" idea working out well for local investors/technologists.
> The govt blocking the access of similar foreign apps (Whatsapp, Skype etc.) to the Chinese people has some role to play in the popularity of it.
This is not accurate. Along with WeChat and QQ, people can freely use Skype and MSN messenger in China. The success behind WeChat and QQ relies on their rich features, fast iterations, etc.
I still remember that during the 360 vs Tencent event, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360_v._Tencent, a lot of people switched to Skype as their communication tool to against the company Tencent, but not long after that people switched back to WeChat and QQ. It's simply because WeChat and QQ are easier to use.
Probably because it's dead and unencrypted to concern the Chinese government. I wonder if you can use Pidgin with OTR encryption on top of MSN for subversive conversations.
I hadn't realized that QQ and WeChat are part of Tencent, but are part of different divisions. It would be interesting to know how collaborative or rivalrous the relation between them is.
QQ was a desktop focused app and WeChat was a ground up write of messaging for mobile. Competing against themselves is pretty brilliant IMO, it creates alternatives for the users but still allows their company to own the market.
> This is not accurate. Along with WeChat and QQ, people can freely use Skype and MSN messenger in China. The success behind WeChat and QQ relies on their rich features, fast iterations, etc.
Really?
I am not sure about Skype which is not even a strong contender anymore in our mobile generation, but WhatsApp is definitely blocked by China[1]. And MSN was dead long ago.
WhatsApp was only started to be blocked recently (last year) when WeChat was already way ahead of WhatsApp in the market. WeChat's success was not due to lack of contender
Fair enough, but does WhatsApp put out any market in China? The strategy is a completely different approach. WhatsApp simply building 1 product for the entire globe where WeChat just focus on 1 monoculture.
Have WhatsApp spent effort to build "that product" to China, and they would fail on it.
And I don't see WhatsApp is super pissed that they lost this 1.3B market anyway.
And in a hindsight, it is probably better for WhatsApp to not build "that app" for China. Imagine spending all those resources, money into a product and simply turn off by China government overnight. It's a big loss for that investment.
TL;DR do not enter China if you haven't yet finished conquered the entire world.
I live in the Bay Area and I use both WhatsApp and WeChat and I would say WeChat is a significantly better product, with more features and better video/audio quality. When I visit China, WeChat is another order of magnitude more indispensable due to its great integration with all the other services (eg, mobile payment penetration through WeChat effectively 100%).
From the UX point of view, it's pretty lightweight for most common operations. Goes into the app, finds the contact, sends message, done. There is virtually no difference between WeChat, WhatsApp, and Apple's own Messages. For many other operations that are less common, WeChat is easier to use and manage (e.g. sending emojis, voice memo, photos).
From an app size point of view, I just checked on my iPhone. WeChat takes up 157.3MB, whereas WhatsApp takes up 105.9MB. The difference seems minor (just a few photos).
WeChat's success is something I find... strange. I just thought uses don't want everything and the kitchen sink in the same app but we chat success story shows I'm wrong? I still don't get it.
I have that Facebook messenger even has draw over other apps permission on Android. I hate the pop up chat. Am I out of touch?
Being able to send money to people via chat app is pretty appealing to many people.
Also, there was a post on here highlighting Japanese web design and you might say it's also a kitchen sink approach. And then someone posted, or the article updated and added(I don't remember exactly) some nice links to show that the exact same design phenomenon exists in major websites in Taiwan, Korea, and China.
We might theorize that users in these particular markets might want everything but the kitchen sink in one app, or one website. I'm not saying that's necessarily the case, but there's definitely some indicators.
Would be very interesting if it's a case of actual rejection of western style minimalistic designs, rather than something like it being all they've known and thus have simply gotten used to.
Let see...
- Why do I care about reading someone's life moment on an IM? WhatsApp also tried this and another reason I think it is now heading to the "dark side"
- Why do I said... Request a Didi on an IM ?
- Why would I care to use it to pay for something? I just want to message someone.
- Why do I even care about these features? I just want to message someone...
- In fact, why do I care about so much eye-killing gifs/emoji
An IM is an IM. But then I grew up in the western world, so my opinions might not apply to everyone. But I am sure as hell share someone's opinion on this.
Is it bloated? Hell yeah, can it still make a case that Chinese general population would prefer bloated single-app? Sure, but that doesn't mean I like it.
>Why do I even care about these features? I just want to message someone...
You care that the other person will be on it too. But why will they be on it？
Mass adoption isnt just about what you want, its about what other people on the same service want as well. It has to offer a superset of your wants, her wants, his wants, etc or you will love it, but they will go elsewhere. Its not all about you. Having everyone on it is THE killer feature.
Personally I don't think it's too bloated. However, its an absolute storage hog ~ My WeChat is taking up 2.4gig of storage space. I guess thats the issue of audio messages alongside the ability to send full-quality images.
My wife is Chinese to I use WeChat a fair bit. I only use it for messaging and calling, so can’t comment on the other features, but for what I use it seems fast, stable and easy to use.
How do you distinguish between featureful and bloated? What are the criteria you would use to tell one from the other?
whatsapp calls are blocked or unusable already for years
trust me I tried when I lived there, messages work but forget about video and audio, only international service which worked was Skype but even that fails most of the time, so your option are obscure messengers and less known webrtc sites
When Skype introduced end-to-end encryption the government tried to block it, but the backlash from businesses in China was so big they had to unblock it.
Well, I think it's not just simply "protectionism", but because the Chinese government really want to enforce censorship on all digital products used by people living in China.
When Google refuse to follow that, they are just simply not allowed. I have seen foreign companies built products in China but they all have to agree to these censorship laws.
> not long after that people switched back to WeChat and QQ. It's simply because WeChat and QQ are easier to use.
That is not completely right. People switch back because most of their contacts are using QQ and WeChat.
And that's actually why people keep using Tencent product -- because all your friends are using it, your mom using it, your boss using it, so you have to. In fact, I think most of those IM's gaining their user base because of this.
Also, encouraging Chinese people using domestic services is good for government, as they had better control of those services. So they did, by selectively making foreign services unstable.
Censorship is not just a mean of control, it's also a business: Government wants control, company wants money, so they formed an alliance to get what they want.
> And that's actually why people keep using Tencent product -- because all your friends are using it, your mom using it, your boss using it, so you have to. In fact, I think most of those IM's gaining their user base because of this.
Is it cultural? I use signal. Most of my contacts don't use signal. I've forced the people I talk to the most to get signal. For everyone else, I'll use WhatsApp or just text. I don't need everyone to use something for me to use that thing. In fact, the day my mum joins Snapchat will be the day I'll uninstall it for good.
In China, we have a some sort of social phenomenon called "Herd behavior"[0], simply put: If something is popular in crowd, then it tend to be more popular.
Also, I found that most Chinese people are lack of motion of trying something new: If something works, then we'll keep using it and stop worrying about it until it breaks.
> I've forced the people I talk to the most to get signal.
In China, this hardly works, because people you try to convincing may also binded to WeChat by their contacts. So a easier choice for them is just to silently ditch you.
(Of course, dad and mom are more likely to stick with whatever chat service you're using, so :DDDD)
BTW: There are no encrypted chat service in China, and Chinese people don't care too much of their privacy (By western standard).
So if you tell them: We should not let government listening our conversations, let's use Signal! You will usually get replies like: Yes, just let them listen, I have nothing to hide. And keep using WeChat.
Skype video and audio it's crippled with speed to such extent it's unusable for most of the time
so yeah, technically you are correct, it's not blocked, it just doesn't work which is de facto same thing for end user deciding what app to use
lived in China for many years, it was frustrating I could not talk with my family abroad, apparently too dangerous for Chinese Gov to let me talk with my parents and I am not gonna ask people outside China to install spyware like QQ or WeChat. the saddest part it's unless you wanna completely cut the ties you still need to keep it installed like my wife does (I cut the ties with non VPN folks), any other reasonable option would be freezing and unfreezing on demand which kinda ruins messaging experience and might as well use email
That definitely helped to grab the long tail but in general WeChat is so much more than WhatsApp (Skype is even lower league).
You use it to pay in restaurants, buy metro tickets, rent a bike, order a taxi, order courier services etc. In China it's not an app, it's the app. If they integrated Meituan (local recommendations and discount coupons) you wouldn't need any other app to survive.
Yeah, allowing for competition worked out so nice for everyone else- like europe, africa, the middle east and russia.
All power houses of the information technology.
The general theory that I have is that the Great Migration brought millions of chinese citizens to the city, who neither had bank accounts, credit cards, or phones. The pathway to connecting with friends, businesses, and money or even finding jobs immediately became "Get WeChat and a phone." This lead to a reenforcement cycle with businesses, that they had to offer services on WeChat to get new customers and combined with the injections of cash due to the overall modernization of China, it allowed WeChat to grow even more. And of course, add in the local government blocking foreign competitors.
Thus a large portion of some individuals where basically introduced to modern computing via phones and via chat and businesses started advertising "Chat-first" as well.
I've seen roughly the same in India with WhatsApp, but with a lot less discrete functionality.
Feel free to correct my theory though, it's mostly outside observation...
The lower end you go, the more popular QQ is over WeChat, at least that was the case a few years ago (I'm sure WeChat is over dominating now). WeChat started to become popular firmly among the middle and upper classes as far as I could tell.
Thats a fair point that asks 'Why did WeChat become the upper/middle city class chat app of choice over QQ and others' and I'd love for someone to weigh in there...
QQ didn't require a smartphone, while WeChat did. You can basically see WeChat adoption as being correlated with smartphone adoption (and the middle class adopted them first). Also, young people are more likely to use QQ than WeChat because QQ is anonymous and focuses on gaming, they are much less interested in WeChat's location-based and commerce features.
Note that QQ and WeChat are both Tencent, they aren't meant to be in direct competition with each other.
Well I'd like to point out that 微信 (WeChat) does require a personal bank card in order for monies to be transferred/stored on a persons account.
I think the two main contenders for payment apps are Wexin and Alipay (支付宝). Both are vastly more popular than QQ these days.
WeChat and its dominance in its early days to a number of factors. Primarily in its infancy this is: good advertising, uniqueness compared to QQ (think MySpace -> FB), solid interface and voice memos. Voice memos were a killer feature that is massively more popular than in England (my experience) and I assume most of the West. Later on payments were added which enables anyone to have a business (receive money for services) and huge convenience for shopping or sending money to friends.
Alipay at the moment is less focused on social media like WeChat and more on interlinking services (Cinema, Shopping, Mobile payments, Utilities, Lifestyle etc). Also there's a massive advertisement campaign driving its use; currently each 24 hours users can scan a red envelope (红包) QR code an receive credit on their balance. I've receive $4~5 dollars a day, with an average of $1. Thats a free breakfast for most people.
Typing Chinese is significantly harder than typing English. Thus, voice memos offer a superior user experience. Building in Voice Memos as a first class feature into the messaging UI was what got WeChat its initial push.
That really isn't true, even with a pinyin IME. More so if are talking about spoken Chinese (used for chat) vs. more colloquial written Chinese. Prediction really does speed things up (on my old nokia back in 2002 I used to be able to text faster in Chinese than in English).
Not really true IMO, because you can even use initialisms to type entire phrases and sentences in pinyin and omit most of the characters.
Let's say you wanted to write 我很喜欢吃汉堡 (I really like eating hamburgers), you can get away with just typing 'w h x h ch han bao' and predictive text gets you the entire sentence.
Chinese text is well optimized towards readability and information density, at the expense of taking a lot of work to manually write, but that calculus completely changes if your writing system is smart enough.
Personally I believe this to be the correct answer. I've lived in 4 countries in Europe and China and only in the latter is it perfectly acceptable to be loud and noisy on public transport (and in general everywhere).
I love China, but I do believe the culture of apathy towards others that are not family have helped this. 没办法！
The most interesting to me how it leveled the playing field.
It's not considered awkward/strange to just chat with any business (restaurant, online shop) owner before deciding to spend your money. People just love comparing prices for everything and doing "background checks" all the time.
I understand WeChat to be effectively an application platform. It runs messaging, payments, delivery tracking, and many more mini programs, and runs on devices that are relatively old and underpowered by US standards.
How is this architected? Is there a platform/app separation, or just a pile of spaghetti, or something in between?
Having just returned from China after a year, I must also point out that 支付宝 (Alipay) is also extremely popular for payments.
Also, tsunamifury noted that their theory is that the wave of migrants "...who neither had bank accounts, credit cards, or phones" is partly responsible. Again, I must point out however that WePay requires a linked bank account in order to allow for the transfer of money.
Please also point out that that "linked bank account" is currently only work for China banks. If you are using foreign banks, no luck. :-(
And every significant transaction required you to provide ID, which is currently supporting China ID, some apps do have support for foreign passports, but do you want to share your passports to those China apps?
If it makes you feel any better, most countries financial apps don't link with foreign bank accounts either, unless it's a credit card. Credit histories also don't cross borders easily.
SEPA & the EU is the special case exception I've found.
I just return from a trip to China and yes I carried a 10yrs China visa to open a bank with Bank of Construction in Guangdong province. No, the bank's front desk refuse it and said they cannot accept foreign passports.
Having a "work" visa is possible though.
Please stop spreading rumours about China when it's not true.
Not sure if things has changed but 1 year ago my brother in law has opened an account in bank of China 中国银行 while he was on a 1 year traveling visa. You may want to try with another bank
I am curious what type of "traveling visa" was that, because a tourist visa don't work for me. Also Chinese government change policies all the time and rollout instantaneously. Whatever works 3-months ago don't mean it works now.
In my team a lot of people use WeChat. So I set out to give it a try. When I was forced to leave my voiceprint [1], I chickened out and aborted the registration.
I have been using WeChat on daily basis for 5-6 years now, this is the first time I've ever heard the voiceprint feature. Checked my wechat client and the feature is like 4 clicks away from the main UI, and you get choose to activate it if you want.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 148 ms ] threadThis is not accurate. Along with WeChat and QQ, people can freely use Skype and MSN messenger in China. The success behind WeChat and QQ relies on their rich features, fast iterations, etc.
I still remember that during the 360 vs Tencent event, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360_v._Tencent, a lot of people switched to Skype as their communication tool to against the company Tencent, but not long after that people switched back to WeChat and QQ. It's simply because WeChat and QQ are easier to use.
Interesting YC blog about Tencent and WeChat. [1]
1. http://blog.ycombinator.com/lessons-from-wechat/
Really?
I am not sure about Skype which is not even a strong contender anymore in our mobile generation, but WhatsApp is definitely blocked by China[1]. And MSN was dead long ago.
[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/25/whatsapp-blocked-in-china/
Have WhatsApp spent effort to build "that product" to China, and they would fail on it.
And I don't see WhatsApp is super pissed that they lost this 1.3B market anyway.
And in a hindsight, it is probably better for WhatsApp to not build "that app" for China. Imagine spending all those resources, money into a product and simply turn off by China government overnight. It's a big loss for that investment.
TL;DR do not enter China if you haven't yet finished conquered the entire world.
When I send a message, why does it need to be so bloated. I just wanna send a message. Does being lightweight a feature too?
From the UX point of view, it's pretty lightweight for most common operations. Goes into the app, finds the contact, sends message, done. There is virtually no difference between WeChat, WhatsApp, and Apple's own Messages. For many other operations that are less common, WeChat is easier to use and manage (e.g. sending emojis, voice memo, photos).
From an app size point of view, I just checked on my iPhone. WeChat takes up 157.3MB, whereas WhatsApp takes up 105.9MB. The difference seems minor (just a few photos).
I have that Facebook messenger even has draw over other apps permission on Android. I hate the pop up chat. Am I out of touch?
Also, there was a post on here highlighting Japanese web design and you might say it's also a kitchen sink approach. And then someone posted, or the article updated and added(I don't remember exactly) some nice links to show that the exact same design phenomenon exists in major websites in Taiwan, Korea, and China.
We might theorize that users in these particular markets might want everything but the kitchen sink in one app, or one website. I'm not saying that's necessarily the case, but there's definitely some indicators.
Would be very interesting if it's a case of actual rejection of western style minimalistic designs, rather than something like it being all they've known and thus have simply gotten used to.
Let see... - Why do I care about reading someone's life moment on an IM? WhatsApp also tried this and another reason I think it is now heading to the "dark side" - Why do I said... Request a Didi on an IM ? - Why would I care to use it to pay for something? I just want to message someone. - Why do I even care about these features? I just want to message someone... - In fact, why do I care about so much eye-killing gifs/emoji
An IM is an IM. But then I grew up in the western world, so my opinions might not apply to everyone. But I am sure as hell share someone's opinion on this.
Is it bloated? Hell yeah, can it still make a case that Chinese general population would prefer bloated single-app? Sure, but that doesn't mean I like it.
You care that the other person will be on it too. But why will they be on it？
Mass adoption isnt just about what you want, its about what other people on the same service want as well. It has to offer a superset of your wants, her wants, his wants, etc or you will love it, but they will go elsewhere. Its not all about you. Having everyone on it is THE killer feature.
So that's bloated then ?
How do you distinguish between featureful and bloated? What are the criteria you would use to tell one from the other?
trust me I tried when I lived there, messages work but forget about video and audio, only international service which worked was Skype but even that fails most of the time, so your option are obscure messengers and less known webrtc sites
When Skype introduced end-to-end encryption the government tried to block it, but the backlash from businesses in China was so big they had to unblock it.
WeChat is great, but pretend there is no protectionism around it is also disingenuous.
Disclaimer: Chinese.
When Google refuse to follow that, they are just simply not allowed. I have seen foreign companies built products in China but they all have to agree to these censorship laws.
Disclaimer: Chinese too. :-)
That is not completely right. People switch back because most of their contacts are using QQ and WeChat.
And that's actually why people keep using Tencent product -- because all your friends are using it, your mom using it, your boss using it, so you have to. In fact, I think most of those IM's gaining their user base because of this.
Also, encouraging Chinese people using domestic services is good for government, as they had better control of those services. So they did, by selectively making foreign services unstable.
Censorship is not just a mean of control, it's also a business: Government wants control, company wants money, so they formed an alliance to get what they want.
Is it cultural? I use signal. Most of my contacts don't use signal. I've forced the people I talk to the most to get signal. For everyone else, I'll use WhatsApp or just text. I don't need everyone to use something for me to use that thing. In fact, the day my mum joins Snapchat will be the day I'll uninstall it for good.
In China, we have a some sort of social phenomenon called "Herd behavior"[0], simply put: If something is popular in crowd, then it tend to be more popular.
Also, I found that most Chinese people are lack of motion of trying something new: If something works, then we'll keep using it and stop worrying about it until it breaks.
> I've forced the people I talk to the most to get signal.
In China, this hardly works, because people you try to convincing may also binded to WeChat by their contacts. So a easier choice for them is just to silently ditch you.
(Of course, dad and mom are more likely to stick with whatever chat service you're using, so :DDDD)
BTW: There are no encrypted chat service in China, and Chinese people don't care too much of their privacy (By western standard).
So if you tell them: We should not let government listening our conversations, let's use Signal! You will usually get replies like: Yes, just let them listen, I have nothing to hide. And keep using WeChat.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_behavior#Everyday_decisio...
QQ vs (Whatsapp, Skype, MSN messager, etc)
WeChat vs (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc)
so yeah, technically you are correct, it's not blocked, it just doesn't work which is de facto same thing for end user deciding what app to use
lived in China for many years, it was frustrating I could not talk with my family abroad, apparently too dangerous for Chinese Gov to let me talk with my parents and I am not gonna ask people outside China to install spyware like QQ or WeChat. the saddest part it's unless you wanna completely cut the ties you still need to keep it installed like my wife does (I cut the ties with non VPN folks), any other reasonable option would be freezing and unfreezing on demand which kinda ruins messaging experience and might as well use email
Make China Great Again?
You use it to pay in restaurants, buy metro tickets, rent a bike, order a taxi, order courier services etc. In China it's not an app, it's the app. If they integrated Meituan (local recommendations and discount coupons) you wouldn't need any other app to survive.
Bummer, not what I thought :) http://www.irchelp.org/clients/unix/weechat.html
Thus a large portion of some individuals where basically introduced to modern computing via phones and via chat and businesses started advertising "Chat-first" as well.
I've seen roughly the same in India with WhatsApp, but with a lot less discrete functionality.
Feel free to correct my theory though, it's mostly outside observation...
Note that QQ and WeChat are both Tencent, they aren't meant to be in direct competition with each other.
I think the two main contenders for payment apps are Wexin and Alipay (支付宝). Both are vastly more popular than QQ these days.
WeChat and its dominance in its early days to a number of factors. Primarily in its infancy this is: good advertising, uniqueness compared to QQ (think MySpace -> FB), solid interface and voice memos. Voice memos were a killer feature that is massively more popular than in England (my experience) and I assume most of the West. Later on payments were added which enables anyone to have a business (receive money for services) and huge convenience for shopping or sending money to friends.
Alipay at the moment is less focused on social media like WeChat and more on interlinking services (Cinema, Shopping, Mobile payments, Utilities, Lifestyle etc). Also there's a massive advertisement campaign driving its use; currently each 24 hours users can scan a red envelope (红包) QR code an receive credit on their balance. I've receive $4~5 dollars a day, with an average of $1. Thats a free breakfast for most people.
Let's say you wanted to write 我很喜欢吃汉堡 (I really like eating hamburgers), you can get away with just typing 'w h x h ch han bao' and predictive text gets you the entire sentence.
Chinese text is well optimized towards readability and information density, at the expense of taking a lot of work to manually write, but that calculus completely changes if your writing system is smart enough.
I think voice messaging took off in China mainly because they don't have the same cultural barriers to voice messaging that we do.
I love China, but I do believe the culture of apathy towards others that are not family have helped this. 没办法！
It's not considered awkward/strange to just chat with any business (restaurant, online shop) owner before deciding to spend your money. People just love comparing prices for everything and doing "background checks" all the time.
How is this architected? Is there a platform/app separation, or just a pile of spaghetti, or something in between?
And every significant transaction required you to provide ID, which is currently supporting China ID, some apps do have support for foreign passports, but do you want to share your passports to those China apps?
SEPA & the EU is the special case exception I've found.
Nope, that exception don't even existed in Alipay/WeChat Pay as well :-) Being foreigner in China sucks.
Yes, being a foreigner in China does suck but not for this case.
Having a "work" visa is possible though.
Please stop spreading rumours about China when it's not true.
And no, we’re not trying to spread rumors :)
“Tencent is a content partner of The Verge in China.”
[1] http://blog.wechat.com/2015/05/21/voiceprint-the-new-wechat-...