11 ms·

What Would a WeChat Replacement Need?

62 points by oskarth 6y ago

lnanek2 6y ago
Seems like a silly article. Even if they had feature parity today, very few people would use the replacement because their friends aren't using it, their family aren't using it, the shops they want to buy from aren't using it, the people they meet aren't using it...
- dragonelite 6y ago
  This i think, they are grossly overestimating how much people really care about privacy. To make the transition to a more private ecosystem etc. I'm still surprised why Facebook still has multiple apps for feed and chatting. Because Friends and Family are still using Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram etc i also keep on using those apps. Im just navigating those app with the thought of they will probably save this somewhere.
- soylentcola 6y ago
  Exactly. Setting aside the issues of whether Google would be preferable to Facebook as a central "portal" like this, they ran into the exact same issue when they launched G+. At the time it had feature parity (and in many cases, superiority) with Facebook, but even though loads of people already had Google accounts for Gmail or Docs, etc. they didn't want to post to both Facebook and G+. Since everyone was on Facebook and less than everyone was on G+, it didn't matter that you could silo your contacts more easily, integrate voice/video chat, make online/in person payments, or maintain some semblance of a personal "page" in addition to just looking at an activity stream. And as we've seen over and over, once something is seen as an "also-ran" or less popular option, it largely becomes a joke among the potential userbase and definitely not a success.
lvturner 6y ago
I only skim read this, but it feels like you could swap "WeChat" for any messaging system or social networking site
- tensor 6y ago
  That's definitely not true. WeChat has a bunch of ecommerce stuff built in among other features. You can pay for stuff on WeChat and there are stores. It even has translation built in to facilitate buying and selling between people from different countries. I think there are also apps and other stuff there too. It's more like a chat app that became an ecommerce and mini-app platform.
  - sho_hn 6y ago
    It's similar with KakaoTalk in Korea, which now also has a payment system in addition to acting as a regular bank, and allows you to buy various things including, say, hairdresser appointments. 93% smartphone market share.
    - robjan 6y ago
      Also Line, which is also used in many parts of East Asia.
    - verst 6y ago
      Kakao has a separate app for everything. Quite different from WeChat. KakaoTalk, KakaoTaxi, KakaoPay etc etc I wouldn't say that those are all extremely well integrated with each other.
      - sho_hn 6y ago
        Sorta both - the hairdresser booking and other commerce is in the main messenger app.
  - lvturner 6y ago
    Facebook also has all of this, though I conceed that it doesn't have a built in user to user payments solution... Yet.
krcz 6y ago
Telegram was on a good path to become WeChat replacement, with its Telegram Open Network blockchain an Gram cryptocurrency coming and plans to add wide range of services including decentralized storage, web pages and payment channels. But now it looks that part has been killed by SEC, so the niche is still unoccupied.
- foenix 6y ago
  Do you have more info about being killed by the SEC? I'm curious about this because I was looking forward to a Western Competitor to WeChat.
  - krcz 6y ago
    Sure: * TON blog: https://ton-telegram.net/news/telegram-and-sec-asked-to-speed-up-suitlaw/ https://ton-telegram.net/news/telegram-and-sec-asked-to-spee... * nice summary of how US securities law affected TON (from October 2019): https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/10/13/sec-blocks-the-telegram-ico-what-this-means-and-what-happens-now/ https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/10/13/sec-blocks-t... * verdict in the case: https://www.reuters.com/article/legal-us-otc-telegram/sec-wins-injunction-against-telegram-blockchain-launch-in-key-ico-case-idUSKBN21C3N0 https://www.reuters.com/article/legal-us-otc-telegram/sec-wi... Some investors are considering launching independent blockchain based on open-sourced TON technology. But even if they do, it's not clear when is Telegram going to integrate wallet with their app, if ever.
    - AVTizzle 6y ago
      Great summary. I'm very biased (active developer in Telegram ecosystem), but I'm having a hard time imagining Durov letting this SEC case stop him. Even if he has to return all the funds, I'm confident he will still push forward and bring TON and Grams into production. It's less of a straight path, but Durov's smart and stubborn - two valuable traits in this circumstace.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
gruez 6y ago
He missed a point (and probably an important one for wechat's home market): CCP approval. /snark
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ardy42 6y ago
  Definitely. Literally half of the features in the "What do we want?" section would get his replacement banned in the PRC, which is one of the few markets where WeChat is popular enough to even be something to replace.
  - Blake_Emigro 6y ago
    And much more. Not going to through it all in detail, and there are probably many things I don’t know about WeChat since I’m not a heavy user living in mainland China. The team definitely needs to get the experience of being behind the great firewall. Try using a VPN there to watch YouTube, try using a locally purchased cell phone without access to Google Play or the Apple app store. Try bashing PRC government policies in WeChat. Only then will they see how tightly things are locked down. It's not like they're the only ones to have this idea, so why doesn't it exist? Oh, because it's really difficult and even dangerous with the current police state that controls the communications.
robjan 6y ago
Spoiler alert: the answer is Blockchain according to the post. Site is running slow, here's an archive: https://archive.is/w1HMt https://archive.is/w1HMt
pwinnski 6y ago
It would need to be introduced in a single large city in 2011 and spread from there with the implicit backing of the federal government. It would not need a blockchain. There is no reason whatsoever for basing this on a blockchain.
- naringas 6y ago
  But then we have to trust our government... and governments vary in their trustworthiness
  - vbezhenar 6y ago
    It does not matter whether you trust the government or not. The only thing that matters is whether you can resist the government or not.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
m11a 6y ago
I think people that feel WeChat is simply a social network don't understand WeChat. Though the article doesn't say this, the comments here and popular opinion generally think that. From my time visiting China I'm not sure it's possible to live, in the urban areas, without WeChat. Payments are basically all through WeChat; I found places that didn't take Visa/Mastercard (or even know what those were, although that may have just been my pronunciation). So the answer to this article is simple: - For China: CCP approval - For America/Europe: WeChat would never happen, unless there was severe monopolisation that allowed a company to roll something like WeChat out successfully, or the federal government / national governments mandated it The article discusses how a WeChat replacement may be done using blockchain, not what a WeChat replacement needs to be successful (as the title would imply), or what may be the most technically viable way of doing it.
- mcelhinney 6y ago
  Just to add that most Chinese businesses accept payments through AliPay along with WeChat.
  - Aperocky 6y ago
    That is the duopoly in China. Alibaba and Wechat - the 2 apps that allow you to do everything. Including paying utilities, phone bills, even taxes.
  - yftsui 6y ago
    Alibaba get to be endorsed by building computing infrastructure for the government, the cake is already split between Alibaba and Tencent. There isn't much chance someone else could get a cut, even for state owned companies, I guess same applies to Cloud Computing market in China.
- decanus 6y ago
  The article doesn't really mention blockchain other than 2 times quickly, it seems like everyone in this comment section seems to believe that though as if they said you MUST use blockchain at every step of building something like this.
timwaagh 6y ago
I would be interested in a we hat replacement, but as soon as I read ethereum I thought: nah. Cryptocurrencies are just not compatible with mainstream consumption. Why? Because I get paid in euros. And you might get paid in dollars. And a wechat user gets paid in Yuan. But nobody gets paid in ethereum.
- wolco 6y ago
  That's not true anymore. I've been paided and knows others who continue to be paid in bitcoin.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    >> But nobody gets paid in ethereum. > That's not true anymore. I've been paided and knows others who continue to be paid in bitcoin. The statement is true, if properly understood. Colloquially, "nobody gets paid in [cryptocurrency]" means that it's so unusual to get paid in it that it's reasonable to assume no one does. That's not a statement that can be shown to be false with a few counterexamples.
krak12 6y ago
Support from Chinese Communist Party
ausjke 6y ago
LINE, whatsapp etc are catching up wechat. Instead of cloning wechat, an alternative would be developing a proxy between IM apps, i.e. all wechat messages can be forwarded to whatsapp so it become part of whatsapp, well, kind of, it's painful to use whatsapp, LINE, telegram, wechat at the same time, need something to "unite" them so we can go to one place and do it all.
- t0astbread 6y ago
  Wasn't XMPP supposed to do something like that? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP#Connecting_to_other_protocols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP#Connecting_to_other_proto...
  - ryukafalz 6y ago
    XMPP does it, Matrix does it: https://matrix.org/bridges/ https://matrix.org/bridges/ ...honestly most of the open chat protocols end up with bridges since it's easier to do there than with the proprietary ones. WhatsApp for example will ban you if they see you trying to connect with a third-party client; using the Matrix bridge actually involves running Android with the official client in a VM.
- nradov 6y ago
  Chat vendors have no incentive to support standards based interoperability. They all want to leverage network effects to maximize switching costs and keep users confined to their walled gardens. The only way to break this would probably be government mandates.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- thoraway1010 6y ago
  100% not true. Who accepts payments using Line in china? Wechat was doing 1 billion transactions PER DAY. Revenue for 2019 from fintech (wechat pay etc) was up something like 30% + (100B RMB?) All these competitors "catching up" to wechat - I mean, is line even profitable or at similar scale?
silvether 6y ago
Feature #1: Censorship circumvention.
throwaway6250 6y ago
People seem to have the idea that WeChat is some sort of amazing application -- it's not. In fact the only reason why it has the market share it does in China is simply because all competitors are blocked. Some of WeChat's real pain points are: - No backing up your messages to the cloud like WhatsApp or having them loaded from the server like Facebook Messenger. Moving all your messages from one phone to another is quite the ordeal . - Complete disregard for platform standards. Specifically notifications on Android and Windows 10 are atrocious. Both WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have notifications that are well integrated with the especially the Android notification system, WeChat notifications however are not. -A lot of nice to have chat features are either non existent or have just recently been introduced. For example a poor implementation of quoting a previous message was just introduced like a month ago, and there are no reactions for specific messages -- and no timeline for implementing them either. WeChat does have quite a bit of different "apps" built into it, but not really more convenient to use than the separate apps are. It's mainly just a casualty of China's lack of anti monopoly legislation.On my phone I have Alipay (the other half of china's online payment duopoly) installed together with WeChat, and almost always use it for payment (It's pretty much accepted everywhere WeChat is)
- tanilama 6y ago
  > simply because all competitors are blocked. International competitors may be. Till this day, I didn't see something come close to what WeChat is offering in China. WeChat is like Chrome, it is so big and ubiquitous in China, it can dictate standard. The online backup of messages itself is a pain point I agree, but local transfer is possible, though a bit cumbersome.
  - verall 6y ago
    I think the international opinion is that there is no WeChat competitor in China because people are afraid to step on the toes of those in power. Chrome is enormous and ubiquitous because maintaining a modern browser is orders of magnitude more difficult than maintaining a chat application. Why do you think there a many competitors outside China but none in?
okgood1 6y ago
The only answer is Replace CCP.
aidenn0 6y ago
What is WeChat?
- hundchenkatze 6y ago
  I think you meant to type this into your browsers search bar.
  - aidenn0 6y ago
    Nope.
ngcc_hk 6y ago
They can come out but you cannot go in. As in the article wechat but no visa. That is the problem. The world will have only 1 winner if this continue.
tanilama 6y ago
Surprised to see no Payments mentioned at all, which makes the post makes very little sense. WeChat is also, and by large, a financial service. Payment and transfer is happening all the time on this platform, and to replace that is a magnitude difficult than just replace the chat.
blamoo 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3dl32LaOls&feature=youtu.be&t=77 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3dl32LaOls&feature=youtu.be... 10 seconds, then https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw2nfdNRAn0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw2nfdNRAn0 China Bad SV Good SV Make New WeChat SV Win Yay https://archive-media-1.nyafuu.org/vp/thumb/1525/64/1525648115803s.jpg https://archive-media-1.nyafuu.org/vp/thumb/1525/64/15256481...
hank_z 6y ago
WeChat's dominance in Chinese social media is mainly due to its close relationship with CCP. It would be a different story if the market was open to west tech companies. Talking about a censorship resistant social media in China is completely a waste of time.
etherpeopleses 6y ago
This technology has a lot of potential. I have played around with Status for a while and it has a real potential to surpass the safety functionalities of Telegram and Signal.
cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
You will probably never come up with the right answer for this question because the question itself is wrong. You never build a "WeChat replacement" by building a WeChat replacement. You just end up with a knockoff if you start from this question.
yalogin 6y ago
This is what facebook wanted to do when they launched their APIa long time ago, never came to pass. WeChat did it. Its a whole operating system in itself.
amachefe 6y ago
Chinese govt (firewall) and people of China
kaixi 6y ago
WeChat is a not a chat app. It's a micro universe. Imagine WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Paypal, Uber, etc. and an entire app platform all integrated into a single app. That's WeChat.
freewizard 6y ago
You don’t just build a product like WeChat or Facebook. You grow your product to that level. What WeChat/Facebook are today is highly path-dependent hence you don’t get to replicate that, and your intelligence and ambition probably won’t let you either. Stop try to replace them, build sth different and help people in a new and better way. With that, you might be able to transcend them.
verst 6y ago
WeChat is many things all in a single app: - A payments platform called WeChat Pay (think PayPal, Venmo, Apply Pay, Android Pay all combined) - A consumer messenger platform with voice and video chat (think Facebook Messenger + WhatsApp) - A friends newsfeed called Moments with audio and video support, external links but visibility of content is timeboxed in days, weeks or months (think Facebook News Feed with a touch of Instagram Stories) - An e-commerce store platform called WeChat Store (think Shopify) - A business platform called "Official Accounts" with many features: * A business / bot messaging platform (think Facebook Messenger for Business) * An advertising platform * A content distribution platform, primarily through Official Account Subscription Accounts (like blogs, news, think Medium). WeChat offers this through "Channels", "Top Stories", "Official Accounts" and "Mini Programs". * WeChat Official Accounts Service Accounts can create "Mini Programs" which are rich integrations and tightly integrate with your linked WeChat Payments account, for example: 1. Didi Chuxing for Ridesharing (Uber) 2. Mobike for Bike Rental (Lime Bike etc) 3. Meituan Dianping for e-commerce and food delivery 4. Douban, Yishenghuo, Yoopay etc for Event / Concert Tickets (think Eventbrite, Ticketmaster) Most noteworthy is that WeChat Mini Programs are standalone and don't deeplink to other apps. No aspect of WeChat does Deeplinking to any other app. You always stay in WeChat.
kgc 6y ago
1. Government approval (the ability to record and snoop on all conversations) 2. Wechat would have to lose government approval.
querez 6y ago
This might be onpopular, but I don't think you should aim for "no censorship" and "no way for authority to police people". As we're seeing in today's social media, unfettered communication is not something you might want. Think of all the misinformation, trolling and conspiracy theories going on in our western social media _despite_ very heavy efforts to contain them by Facebook, Google and Twitter. This is biting us hard in our current crisis, where people are going as far as burning down 5G masts, thinking they are heros fighting against the government-ordered spread of Covid-19 [0]. The older I get, the more I start to think that the police fulfills a very fundamental function in our society, no matter how free that society thinks it is. And we likely do want some policing in our virtual worlds as well. Whatever the next social media is going to be (it seems to me that this is what you're trying to plan out here), it should include some sort of moderation option of some case. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/technology/coronavirus-5g-uk.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/technology/coronavirus-5g...

62 points by oskarth 6y ago

Seems like a silly article. Even if they had feature parity today, very few people would use the replacement because their friends aren't using it, their family aren't using it, the shops they want to buy from aren't using it, the people they meet aren't using it...

dragonelite 6y ago
This i think, they are grossly overestimating how much people really care about privacy. To make the transition to a more private ecosystem etc. I'm still surprised why Facebook still has multiple apps for feed and chatting. Because Friends and Family are still using Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram etc i also keep on using those apps. Im just navigating those app with the thought of they will probably save this somewhere.
soylentcola 6y ago
Exactly. Setting aside the issues of whether Google would be preferable to Facebook as a central "portal" like this, they ran into the exact same issue when they launched G+. At the time it had feature parity (and in many cases, superiority) with Facebook, but even though loads of people already had Google accounts for Gmail or Docs, etc. they didn't want to post to both Facebook and G+. Since everyone was on Facebook and less than everyone was on G+, it didn't matter that you could silo your contacts more easily, integrate voice/video chat, make online/in person payments, or maintain some semblance of a personal "page" in addition to just looking at an activity stream. And as we've seen over and over, once something is seen as an "also-ran" or less popular option, it largely becomes a joke among the potential userbase and definitely not a success.

lvturner 6y ago

I only skim read this, but it feels like you could swap "WeChat" for any messaging system or social networking site

tensor 6y ago
That's definitely not true. WeChat has a bunch of ecommerce stuff built in among other features. You can pay for stuff on WeChat and there are stores. It even has translation built in to facilitate buying and selling between people from different countries. I think there are also apps and other stuff there too. It's more like a chat app that became an ecommerce and mini-app platform.
- sho_hn 6y ago
  It's similar with KakaoTalk in Korea, which now also has a payment system in addition to acting as a regular bank, and allows you to buy various things including, say, hairdresser appointments. 93% smartphone market share.
  - robjan 6y ago
    Also Line, which is also used in many parts of East Asia.
  - verst 6y ago
    Kakao has a separate app for everything. Quite different from WeChat. KakaoTalk, KakaoTaxi, KakaoPay etc etc I wouldn't say that those are all extremely well integrated with each other.
    - sho_hn 6y ago
      Sorta both - the hairdresser booking and other commerce is in the main messenger app.
- lvturner 6y ago
  Facebook also has all of this, though I conceed that it doesn't have a built in user to user payments solution... Yet.

krcz 6y ago

Telegram was on a good path to become WeChat replacement, with its Telegram Open Network blockchain an Gram cryptocurrency coming and plans to add wide range of services including decentralized storage, web pages and payment channels. But now it looks that part has been killed by SEC, so the niche is still unoccupied.

foenix 6y ago
Do you have more info about being killed by the SEC? I'm curious about this because I was looking forward to a Western Competitor to WeChat.
- krcz 6y ago
  Sure: * TON blog: https://ton-telegram.net/news/telegram-and-sec-asked-to-speed-up-suitlaw/ https://ton-telegram.net/news/telegram-and-sec-asked-to-spee... * nice summary of how US securities law affected TON (from October 2019): https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/10/13/sec-blocks-the-telegram-ico-what-this-means-and-what-happens-now/ https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/10/13/sec-blocks-t... * verdict in the case: https://www.reuters.com/article/legal-us-otc-telegram/sec-wins-injunction-against-telegram-blockchain-launch-in-key-ico-case-idUSKBN21C3N0 https://www.reuters.com/article/legal-us-otc-telegram/sec-wi... Some investors are considering launching independent blockchain based on open-sourced TON technology. But even if they do, it's not clear when is Telegram going to integrate wallet with their app, if ever.
  - AVTizzle 6y ago
    Great summary. I'm very biased (active developer in Telegram ecosystem), but I'm having a hard time imagining Durov letting this SEC case stop him. Even if he has to return all the funds, I'm confident he will still push forward and bring TON and Grams into production. It's less of a straight path, but Durov's smart and stubborn - two valuable traits in this circumstace.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

gruez 6y ago

He missed a point (and probably an important one for wechat's home market): CCP approval. /snark

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ardy42 6y ago
Definitely. Literally half of the features in the "What do we want?" section would get his replacement banned in the PRC, which is one of the few markets where WeChat is popular enough to even be something to replace.
- Blake_Emigro 6y ago
  And much more. Not going to through it all in detail, and there are probably many things I don’t know about WeChat since I’m not a heavy user living in mainland China. The team definitely needs to get the experience of being behind the great firewall. Try using a VPN there to watch YouTube, try using a locally purchased cell phone without access to Google Play or the Apple app store. Try bashing PRC government policies in WeChat. Only then will they see how tightly things are locked down. It's not like they're the only ones to have this idea, so why doesn't it exist? Oh, because it's really difficult and even dangerous with the current police state that controls the communications.

robjan 6y ago

Spoiler alert: the answer is Blockchain according to the post. Site is running slow, here's an archive: https://archive.is/w1HMt https://archive.is/w1HMt

pwinnski 6y ago

It would need to be introduced in a single large city in 2011 and spread from there with the implicit backing of the federal government. It would not need a blockchain. There is no reason whatsoever for basing this on a blockchain.

naringas 6y ago
But then we have to trust our government... and governments vary in their trustworthiness
- vbezhenar 6y ago
  It does not matter whether you trust the government or not. The only thing that matters is whether you can resist the government or not.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

m11a 6y ago

I think people that feel WeChat is simply a social network don't understand WeChat. Though the article doesn't say this, the comments here and popular opinion generally think that. From my time visiting China I'm not sure it's possible to live, in the urban areas, without WeChat. Payments are basically all through WeChat; I found places that didn't take Visa/Mastercard (or even know what those were, although that may have just been my pronunciation). So the answer to this article is simple: - For China: CCP approval - For America/Europe: WeChat would never happen, unless there was severe monopolisation that allowed a company to roll something like WeChat out successfully, or the federal government / national governments mandated it The article discusses how a WeChat replacement may be done using blockchain, not what a WeChat replacement needs to be successful (as the title would imply), or what may be the most technically viable way of doing it.

mcelhinney 6y ago
Just to add that most Chinese businesses accept payments through AliPay along with WeChat.
- Aperocky 6y ago
  That is the duopoly in China. Alibaba and Wechat - the 2 apps that allow you to do everything. Including paying utilities, phone bills, even taxes.
- yftsui 6y ago
  Alibaba get to be endorsed by building computing infrastructure for the government, the cake is already split between Alibaba and Tencent. There isn't much chance someone else could get a cut, even for state owned companies, I guess same applies to Cloud Computing market in China.
decanus 6y ago
The article doesn't really mention blockchain other than 2 times quickly, it seems like everyone in this comment section seems to believe that though as if they said you MUST use blockchain at every step of building something like this.

timwaagh 6y ago

I would be interested in a we hat replacement, but as soon as I read ethereum I thought: nah. Cryptocurrencies are just not compatible with mainstream consumption. Why? Because I get paid in euros. And you might get paid in dollars. And a wechat user gets paid in Yuan. But nobody gets paid in ethereum.

wolco 6y ago
That's not true anymore. I've been paided and knows others who continue to be paid in bitcoin.
- ardy42 6y ago
  >> But nobody gets paid in ethereum. > That's not true anymore. I've been paided and knows others who continue to be paid in bitcoin. The statement is true, if properly understood. Colloquially, "nobody gets paid in [cryptocurrency]" means that it's so unusual to get paid in it that it's reasonable to assume no one does. That's not a statement that can be shown to be false with a few counterexamples.

krak12 6y ago

Support from Chinese Communist Party

ausjke 6y ago

LINE, whatsapp etc are catching up wechat. Instead of cloning wechat, an alternative would be developing a proxy between IM apps, i.e. all wechat messages can be forwarded to whatsapp so it become part of whatsapp, well, kind of, it's painful to use whatsapp, LINE, telegram, wechat at the same time, need something to "unite" them so we can go to one place and do it all.

t0astbread 6y ago
Wasn't XMPP supposed to do something like that? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP#Connecting_to_other_protocols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP#Connecting_to_other_proto...
- ryukafalz 6y ago
  XMPP does it, Matrix does it: https://matrix.org/bridges/ https://matrix.org/bridges/ ...honestly most of the open chat protocols end up with bridges since it's easier to do there than with the proprietary ones. WhatsApp for example will ban you if they see you trying to connect with a third-party client; using the Matrix bridge actually involves running Android with the official client in a VM.
nradov 6y ago
Chat vendors have no incentive to support standards based interoperability. They all want to leverage network effects to maximize switching costs and keep users confined to their walled gardens. The only way to break this would probably be government mandates.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
thoraway1010 6y ago
100% not true. Who accepts payments using Line in china? Wechat was doing 1 billion transactions PER DAY. Revenue for 2019 from fintech (wechat pay etc) was up something like 30% + (100B RMB?) All these competitors "catching up" to wechat - I mean, is line even profitable or at similar scale?

silvether 6y ago

Feature #1: Censorship circumvention.

throwaway6250 6y ago

People seem to have the idea that WeChat is some sort of amazing application -- it's not. In fact the only reason why it has the market share it does in China is simply because all competitors are blocked. Some of WeChat's real pain points are: - No backing up your messages to the cloud like WhatsApp or having them loaded from the server like Facebook Messenger. Moving all your messages from one phone to another is quite the ordeal . - Complete disregard for platform standards. Specifically notifications on Android and Windows 10 are atrocious. Both WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have notifications that are well integrated with the especially the Android notification system, WeChat notifications however are not. -A lot of nice to have chat features are either non existent or have just recently been introduced. For example a poor implementation of quoting a previous message was just introduced like a month ago, and there are no reactions for specific messages -- and no timeline for implementing them either. WeChat does have quite a bit of different "apps" built into it, but not really more convenient to use than the separate apps are. It's mainly just a casualty of China's lack of anti monopoly legislation.On my phone I have Alipay (the other half of china's online payment duopoly) installed together with WeChat, and almost always use it for payment (It's pretty much accepted everywhere WeChat is)

tanilama 6y ago
> simply because all competitors are blocked. International competitors may be. Till this day, I didn't see something come close to what WeChat is offering in China. WeChat is like Chrome, it is so big and ubiquitous in China, it can dictate standard. The online backup of messages itself is a pain point I agree, but local transfer is possible, though a bit cumbersome.
- verall 6y ago
  I think the international opinion is that there is no WeChat competitor in China because people are afraid to step on the toes of those in power. Chrome is enormous and ubiquitous because maintaining a modern browser is orders of magnitude more difficult than maintaining a chat application. Why do you think there a many competitors outside China but none in?

okgood1 6y ago

The only answer is Replace CCP.

aidenn0 6y ago

What is WeChat?

hundchenkatze 6y ago
I think you meant to type this into your browsers search bar.
- aidenn0 6y ago
  Nope.

ngcc_hk 6y ago

They can come out but you cannot go in. As in the article wechat but no visa. That is the problem. The world will have only 1 winner if this continue.

tanilama 6y ago

Surprised to see no Payments mentioned at all, which makes the post makes very little sense. WeChat is also, and by large, a financial service. Payment and transfer is happening all the time on this platform, and to replace that is a magnitude difficult than just replace the chat.

blamoo 6y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3dl32LaOls&feature=youtu.be&t=77 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3dl32LaOls&feature=youtu.be... 10 seconds, then https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw2nfdNRAn0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw2nfdNRAn0 China Bad SV Good SV Make New WeChat SV Win Yay https://archive-media-1.nyafuu.org/vp/thumb/1525/64/1525648115803s.jpg https://archive-media-1.nyafuu.org/vp/thumb/1525/64/15256481...

hank_z 6y ago

WeChat's dominance in Chinese social media is mainly due to its close relationship with CCP. It would be a different story if the market was open to west tech companies. Talking about a censorship resistant social media in China is completely a waste of time.

etherpeopleses 6y ago

This technology has a lot of potential. I have played around with Status for a while and it has a real potential to surpass the safety functionalities of Telegram and Signal.

cocktailpeanuts 6y ago

You will probably never come up with the right answer for this question because the question itself is wrong. You never build a "WeChat replacement" by building a WeChat replacement. You just end up with a knockoff if you start from this question.

yalogin 6y ago

This is what facebook wanted to do when they launched their APIa long time ago, never came to pass. WeChat did it. Its a whole operating system in itself.

amachefe 6y ago

Chinese govt (firewall) and people of China

kaixi 6y ago

WeChat is a not a chat app. It's a micro universe. Imagine WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Paypal, Uber, etc. and an entire app platform all integrated into a single app. That's WeChat.

freewizard 6y ago

You don’t just build a product like WeChat or Facebook. You grow your product to that level. What WeChat/Facebook are today is highly path-dependent hence you don’t get to replicate that, and your intelligence and ambition probably won’t let you either. Stop try to replace them, build sth different and help people in a new and better way. With that, you might be able to transcend them.

verst 6y ago

WeChat is many things all in a single app: - A payments platform called WeChat Pay (think PayPal, Venmo, Apply Pay, Android Pay all combined) - A consumer messenger platform with voice and video chat (think Facebook Messenger + WhatsApp) - A friends newsfeed called Moments with audio and video support, external links but visibility of content is timeboxed in days, weeks or months (think Facebook News Feed with a touch of Instagram Stories) - An e-commerce store platform called WeChat Store (think Shopify) - A business platform called "Official Accounts" with many features: * A business / bot messaging platform (think Facebook Messenger for Business) * An advertising platform * A content distribution platform, primarily through Official Account Subscription Accounts (like blogs, news, think Medium). WeChat offers this through "Channels", "Top Stories", "Official Accounts" and "Mini Programs". * WeChat Official Accounts Service Accounts can create "Mini Programs" which are rich integrations and tightly integrate with your linked WeChat Payments account, for example: 1. Didi Chuxing for Ridesharing (Uber) 2. Mobike for Bike Rental (Lime Bike etc) 3. Meituan Dianping for e-commerce and food delivery 4. Douban, Yishenghuo, Yoopay etc for Event / Concert Tickets (think Eventbrite, Ticketmaster) Most noteworthy is that WeChat Mini Programs are standalone and don't deeplink to other apps. No aspect of WeChat does Deeplinking to any other app. You always stay in WeChat.

kgc 6y ago

1. Government approval (the ability to record and snoop on all conversations) 2. Wechat would have to lose government approval.

querez 6y ago

This might be onpopular, but I don't think you should aim for "no censorship" and "no way for authority to police people". As we're seeing in today's social media, unfettered communication is not something you might want. Think of all the misinformation, trolling and conspiracy theories going on in our western social media _despite_ very heavy efforts to contain them by Facebook, Google and Twitter. This is biting us hard in our current crisis, where people are going as far as burning down 5G masts, thinking they are heros fighting against the government-ordered spread of Covid-19 [0]. The older I get, the more I start to think that the police fulfills a very fundamental function in our society, no matter how free that society thinks it is. And we likely do want some policing in our virtual worlds as well. Whatever the next social media is going to be (it seems to me that this is what you're trying to plan out here), it should include some sort of moderation option of some case. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/technology/coronavirus-5g-uk.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/technology/coronavirus-5g...