The most popular Chinese messenger. Stop chatting: why the Chinese messenger is ahead of its global competitors
Chinese WeChat messenger is catching up with the world leaders in terms of audience and has already surpassed them in terms of functionality. Many Chinese people no longer need other applications - Silicon Valley innovators can only dream about this for now
At the beginning of 2017, WeChat, a Chinese instant messenger with an audience of over 800 million people and an estimated value of more than $80 billion, revealed new ambitious plans: it wants to turn into a platform for mobile applications, that is, to center the entire smartphone ecosystem. And this is part of a global trend: Gartner analysts write that mobile applications are being replaced by platforms because users do not want to download another application, they want to get new features on those already installed, for example, on instant messengers.
Apple, Google and Facebook are following this path, but so far they are lagging behind the Chinese giant in many ways. “This is the beginning of the end for smartphones as we know them,” writes Techcrunch.
An app for everything
“My whole huge family lives in China - parents, uncles, aunts. And they all use WeChat all the time to communicate, transfer money and more,” says New York-based product designer Sherry Wong. Wong's parents are typical Chinese consumers. In this country, 90% of users access the network with mobile device and on average spend a third of their time on WeChat, writes Bloomberg.
“WeChat is not just an application, as many people think. This is an add-on operating system. Most of the Chinese launch WeChat and do everything that is possible on the Internet on it,” says Dmitry Artsyukh, an entrepreneur and digital expert living in Shanghai. This application integrates the functionality of PayPal, Yelp, Amazon, Uber, TripAdvisor, Slack, Spotify, Tinder and much more. WeChat is used to pay rent, find parking, manage investments, make doctor's appointments, donate to charity, set up dates with strangers and much more.
Moreover, WeChat has features that delight even sophisticated Americans. “If you shake your smartphone, the app will show the WeChat accounts of nearby users,” says Sam Force, director of sales for the American-Lebanese company Band Industries, which has production in China. “The Chinese are shy about approaching strangers, so this helps them a lot,” he says.
Visitors from Europe and the United States are surprised by the widespread use of QR codes and barcodes on WeChat, which the application recognizes using the phone’s camera. With their help, you can join online communities, buy coffee, or go to a conference. Initially, QR codes, according to Artsyukh, which came from Japan, were supposed to solve the problem of expanding the WeChat audience. The fact is that Chinese names often use rare characters that not everyone knows, and it is difficult to catch them by ear. Accordingly, a problem arose - how to add each other as friends. But if, using the appropriate application, you generate a QR code from the name and send it to a new friend, then the problem with rare hieroglyphs disappears.
WeChat is often used as a means of payment. According to The Economist, more than half of WeChat users trusted the messenger and linked their bank cards to this platform, which is also no small achievement.
As a result, the messenger replaces cash and bank cards with accompanying PIN codes and payment terminals - to enter payment data, you just need to scan the barcode. According to the ex-development director of Alibaba.com Denis Makkaveev, this function is used everywhere: “So far I have encountered problems with reception only at some gas stations and in government agencies. Last year I very rarely take cash with me.”
Money in chats
In addition to the variety of functions, including those unusual for a Western user, WeChat differs from WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram and other competitors in that it can make money.
Facebook is just starting to experiment with advertising in the messenger, and WeChat is already generating advertising revenue. According to a report from Tencent, the Chinese holding company of which WeChat is a part, in the fourth quarter of 2016 it earned 5.168 million yuan (about $753 million) from performance advertising, mainly due to its placement in news feed And official accounts WeChat celebrities, as well as other news mobile applications of the holding.
In 2015, HSBC bank valued WeChat at $83.6 billion (despite the fact that a year earlier, Facebook bought WhatsApp, popular in many countries, for $19 billion). How much exactly WeChat earns is not stated in the Tencent report, and the holding did not respond to RBC’s request. According to the Chinese consulting company BDA, cited by The Economist, WeChat generated $1.8 billion in revenue in 2015. According to the publication, more than half of WeChat’s revenue comes from games, with a significant share coming from transaction fees and advertising.
WeChat has become an e-commerce platform, something that Facebook is only trying to achieve. whatsapp and Facebook Messenger are not yet monetized, although Mark Zuckerberg promised to do this in the future in November 2016. “WeChat could be called China's Facebook, but there is a fundamental difference: everyone I know buys things through WeChat all the time,” says Sherry Wong. Even celebrity accounts that are familiar Twitter users or Facebook, on WeChat have turned into stores - souvenirs from idols are sold directly through the messenger, and the application takes a royalty from each transaction.
At the same time, in terms of audience, WeChat is still inferior to key Western competitors who have succeeded at the global level. WhatsApp crossed the 1 billion user mark in February 2016, Facebook Messenger in July 2016, and WeChat has not yet reached the round figure: by the end of 2016, it was used by 889 million people per month.
What is Tencent
Tencent was founded in 1998 by Ma Huateng (middle name Pony Ma) and Zhang Zhidong. Born in 1971, Huateng studied programming at university and, before founding Tencent, worked at China Motion Telecom Development (developing Internet paging) and Runxun Communications. Initially, he and his friends raised investments for an ICQ clone, which the entrepreneur saw during a business trip to the USA. While startups were looking for investment, Huateng combined business management with part-time jobs as a designer and janitor.
Photo: Liang Xu / Zuma / TASS
Now Tencent is one of the three largest Internet holdings in China, competing in scale with Alibaba and Baidu corporations. Tencent has been listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since 2014. In September 2016, Bloomberg named Tencent the most valuable company in China: on September 5, its capitalization reached 1.99 trillion Hong Kong dollars ($256.6 billion). During the third quarter of 2016, Tencent generated more than $6 billion in revenue and more than $2 billion in operating profit.
This holding is known in the world primarily as the owner of WeChat and QQ, it also owns 15% of the Chinese online retailer JD.com, the American gaming company Riot Games, 80% of the Finnish Supercell, which created the famous game Clash of Clans, and a share in the Russian Mail.Ru Group and even a minority stake in Tesla. Tencent's assets include many services - social networks, news applications, online trading services, and games.
Innovation within the corporation
Initially, Tencent released an analogue of the Israeli ICQ, at that time the first chat application for computers. Even the name was similar - QQ. But QQ is more reminiscent of a social network, for example Odnoklassniki, says Artsyukh. Top managers of Tencent noticed a boom in the field mobile internet and tasked two teams with transferring QQ functionality to a new mobile environment. One of the projects in 2011 became the basis of WeChat.
Several factors contributed to WeChat's success in China. First of all, the features of market regulation, namely protectionism on the part of the Chinese government: in China there is no Google Play, so it’s not easy for Western messengers to accumulate an audience.
“There are many barriers to entry into China, but the most significant are government policy and the Chinese mentality - these are the features that play into the hands of WeChat,” says Sergei Kushnarenko, director of business development at the Borscht agency. — In a market of more than 1 billion people and in a country that was experiencing a boom in new available Android smartphones in combination with stable economic growth and brutal competition, the state created conditions under which national companies could easily copy Western Internet models and implement them in their own country. As a result, WeChat is years ahead of all known instant messengers, which is a huge figure in the mobile industry.” The most important factor Dmitry Artsyukh calls a “natural barrier,” that is, the Chinese language, which WhatsApp switched to too late.
Finally, in the history of WeChat there have been breakthrough business solutions. For example, a successful marketing campaign helped convince people to link their bank cards to the chat, according to Connie Chan, a partner at the Andreessen Horowitz venture capital fund.
On New Year According to the Chinese lunar calendar, as well as other holidays, the Chinese traditionally send money to each other in red envelopes. In 2014, WeChat launched a campaign to send money in virtual red envelopes, which in itself was not news - Alibaba also carried out a similar campaign. But WeChat turned the exchange of virtual envelopes into a game: you had to send an envelope to a group of people, and only one of the group would take the entire pot. Red envelopes have become an organic part of WeChat, and Tencent even writes about them in its financial reports. In 2016, users transferred 14 billion envelopes for the New Year - 76% more than a year ago.
Made for the Chinese
But, as is often said, disadvantages are a direct continuation of advantages. the main problem The key to WeChat's continued growth is its locality. Theoretically, a messenger with rich functionality could be popular all over the world. In fact, Tencent actually tried to launch it on different markets, but it didn’t work out.
In 2012, one of the company’s top managers announced its intentions to enter the international level. The company entered into an advertising contract with football star Lionel Messi, tried making Bollywood-style advertisements to break into India, and finally released a version of the application for foreign users with fewer features. But this did not lead to success. By Data App Annie, WeChat is not even in the top 100 in most countries in the world, with the exception of China, of course.
“WeChat is designed for those living in China. It is fully adapted for online and offline business in China and for the Chinese user. We are simply not comfortable using WeChat outside of China. It has a specific design that does not take into account the many needs of the Western user. For example, words in the Russian version are still not translated,” says Kushnarenko.
So now the corporation is focused not on capturing new markets, but on expanding functionality. In January 2017, WeChat introduced a technology that should focus all user interests on the messenger. Now you can create so-called mini programs on the WeChat platform (Tencent did not allow Apple to use the word apps). Mini programs are simplified and lightweight versions of applications. So now WeChat is turning into an app store like App Store and Google Play.
But competitors are not asleep either. While WeChat is encroaching on the territory of Apple and Google, Facebook is taking over some of its functionality. According to Gartner analysts, Facebook is turning into a Western WeChat - after all, in terms of audience monetization, the Chinese have a lot to learn.
The first place China starts is with the WeChat mobile application. There is no way to live here without it, it replaces everything for the Chinese - both messenger and social network, and a dating site, and Skype, and Instagram, and an Internet wallet, and a translator. On the subway, on the bus, in the dentist's chair and in the local bathhouse - everyone is stupid in WeChat. You can't go anywhere without him.
What it is
Wechat is the Chinese equivalent of WhatsApp. Moreover, this is not a second-rate copy, but a full-fledged independent messenger with a bunch of cool functions. It was developed by the same guys who created QQ, a popular social network in Asia. So WeChat was doomed to success.
Messages
Wechat supports a bunch different formats- you can send a text or voice message, record a video, take a photo, show your location, create a short animated image, send money.
Most often, the Chinese send audio messages. At first I didn’t understand what the trick was - why talk if you can print? But after a few days of active testing, I was convinced that dictating messages is very cool and fast. And it’s also very funny when completely strangers send voice messages- your imagination is activated and you begin to imagine what kind of person he is, what he looks like. Now, at every opportunity, I say everything in my voice.
In addition, you can make audio and video calls through WeChat. If Skype and other similar services work very slowly in China, then with WeChat everything flies. So now I communicate with relatives and colleagues through this messenger.
The most important
Any online project, almost all stores, most establishments have their own WeChat group. Guys post messages there, which means you can quickly track the news. All such groups are placed in separate folder“Subscriptions” so as not to create chaos in the feed. The feed itself contains recent conversations and group chats, which, by the way, exist in large quantities and on a variety of topics.
Most of all I like quick addition contacts. To add another person as a friend, you can enter their nickname, phone number, or scan an individual quar code, which is issued by WeChat itself. You point the camera at the display of another smartphone and the person is in your contacts. This is incredibly convenient when meeting people and when you urgently need to resolve some issue with the Chinese, but you don’t know the Chinese language.
The favorite feature of foreigners is the opportunity automatic translation any message. That is, if a Japanese sends a message to a German on WeChat, he will be able to translate it and respond in his native German dialect, which in turn, the Japanese will be able to translate and rejoice modern technologies. So WeChat is damn convenient for international communication.
Other Features
WeChat supports its own payment system - at any kiosk you can pay for a lollipop or a pack of cigarettes using your smartphone. However, most of these kiosks do not support payment by bank card, and through Wechat - no problem.
The application also has a “Moments” tab - this is an analogue of news on Facebook. People post photos, write smart statuses, post videos and more. interesting content. And yes, if you get bored, you can meet someone. To do this, you need to shake your phone and WeChat will show people who are also in this moment Shake your gadget - why not get acquainted?
It was thanks to WeChat that I survived and am still surviving in China with virtually no acquaintances or knowledge of the Chinese language. But about languages another time.
In the Celestial Empire there are strict restrictions for the work of common instant messengers, all correspondence passes through the Golden Shield firewall. Upon arrival in China, it turns out that almost none of the usual programs connect to the server. In this article we will look at which messengers work in China in 2018, and which ones will need to be logged in via a VPN to work.
If this business trip, most likely, you are going to Macau or Hong Kong, in this business zone the ubiquitous “Golden Shield” allows all messengers to work for foreign tourists and local Chinese businessmen. The government understands that limiting communication with the world, a leading Chinese company, is unprofitable, although it undergoes traffic control of all instant messengers. In general, for the messenger to work in China, the authors had to provide user data without encryption to the intelligence services. Only in this case are they available in official iOS stores and Android and their work is not blocked.
WeChat - "Chinese everything"
Chinese residents once again surprised the whole world by launching a unique messenger called WiChat. Overall this is not an easy exchange program instant messages or photos of your cats. It acts as a payment system (and fully), with the help of it one can identify one’s personality, one can pay for any purchases and bills in restaurants, order a taxi, and much more.
Every Chinese person has WiChat, and a Russian businessman simply won’t be able to communicate with them without it. Yes in Russian Federation it is not popular, and in 2017 Roskomnadzor even tried to block it. But you must install WeChat if you are traveling to China on a business trip.
Skype in China only via VPN
The Chinese government does not prohibit tourists and businessmen from other countries from using Skype installed in advance. Yes, you cannot officially download it from Google Play or AppStore directly in the Middle Kingdom, it has been deleted there. But you can use the pre-installed one, although any day the government may decide that it poses some kind of threat and communication interruptions will begin immediately.
Based on the fact that there are no guarantees, it is better to protect yourself before your trip and purchase a Rocket VPN subscription for Skype in China and use it without any obstacles at any time of the day or night.
WhatsApp is also banned
The Chinese government also blocked WhatsApp in China, due to the fact that it was created by Facebook. But the owners of the messenger did not agree to full cooperation and did not provide access to their users’ data. Therefore, using WhatsApp in China via a VPN is the only option.
Telegram blocked immediately
The new project of Pavel Durov, the creator of VK, was blocked in the Celestial Empire by the “Golden Shield” practically the next day after its release in 2015. Since Telegram uses truly encrypted messages, which can even be deleted themselves after a specified period of time. Of course, the Chinese authorities tolerated this, and the Golden Shield covered all Telegram servers. Therefore, in China you only need to access Telegram through a VPN.
Viber in China and banned again
Despite the fact that Viber is quite popular in China, it was also blocked in 2014 due to the government’s failure to gain access to users’ personal correspondence. Therefore, if you need Viber in China, immediately stock up on a reliable VPN, because you can only use it by bypassing the blocking.
How to access instant messenger in China via VPN
The Golden Shield installed by the Chinese government does not prevent you from using any websites or instant messengers once you install Rocket VPN.
Our service offers VPN for smartphone and laptop with the same access, making work easier. Therefore, using our VPN, you don’t have to think about which messenger to use in China, the answer is obvious - the one you like. If you take a subscription for 1 month, it will cost you $5, if you take it for more long term, there will be discounts up to 50%. Rocket VPN will give you access to Google services, beloved Instagram and VK.
With Rocket VPN for China, you will easily access any instant messenger in 2018-2019 at high speed and completely anonymously.
Some information about China's internet censorship and usage popular messengers: WhatsApp, Skype, Viber, WeChat
"The Great Firewall of China"
“Golden Shield” - the system protects Chinese Internet users from malicious information. If previously sites were blocked by certain phrases and black lists, now white lists are being created. Their essence is this - you will be able to visit only those sites that are on the list of allowed resources. Here is a small list of popular sites that are partially or completely unavailable:
You can check the availability of various sites in China using this link.
Just indicate required address and run the scan.
Messengers in China
WeChat is the main messenger in China. If you do business with China, WeChat (Wechat) will become indispensable for you, because Chinese suppliers use it. The application is available for Android, iOS, Windows Phone And Windows Mobile. There is also a desktop version - you can download it for your PC from the official website. Please note that to log in from a computer, you will need to install an application on your smartphone for authentication.
The special path of Chinese mobile applications.
To bookmarks
Residents of China are in line. Photo by Financial Times
More than 600 million people in China own smartphones. Especially Android phones - because of their low price compared to iPhone. Such an attractive market could bring huge profits to Western apps, but most of them are blocked in the country.
Instead of the blocked Google Play, there are at least 10 similar stores operating in China. They offer applications hosted in the American counterpart, while bypassing Google blocking. The most striking example is the 360 market store. It offers more than 150 thousand applications.
360 market does not completely replace the American store, but offers similar Chinese applications. Advantage of the service relative to others Chinese stores consists of a large assortment of video games. For example, when the game “Plants vs. Zombies 2”, on 360 market it was downloaded by more than 10 million people in 36 hours.
According to the service's management, it reaches more than 400 million people every month. For comparison, Google Play has more than a billion people every month.
Photo sharing app Camera360
Camera360 interface
Indirect analogue of Instagram
After Instagram was blocked in 2014 Chinese developers They did not completely copy the functionality of the application, but, on the contrary, expanded it in similar services. The most popular of them is Camera360. As stated in the description of the application, it quickly contours the face, smoothes the skin, enlarges the eyes, removes acne or blackheads, blurs and crops the image. In general, “good for selfies.” Additionally, users can add stickers and animations to photos.
After processing, the application uploads the photos to a social network similar to Instagram: there you can also follow people, like and comment on other people's photos. The number of people who have downloaded the application is more than one, it is also popular in other countries. For comparison, 700 million people in the world use Instagram.
Alipay payment system
An icon with AliPay and WeChat QR codes for paying for purchases in a cafe. Alibaba Photos
The most popular Chinese payment system created by Alibaba. Using the service, people pay for gas, electricity, communication bills, and purchases in stores or on websites. You can also buy securities, take out insurance, or transfer money to a bank account through the application.
Most stores in major cities have an icon at the cash register with QR codes for Alipay and WeChat wallets. Authorization is also available in the application using . The service reaches 450 million people. PayPal services 179 million people.
Taxi calling service Didi
Driving directions built in the Didi application. Photo by AFP
At the beginning of 2016, Didi launched with Uber China for Chinese customers. The American company offered more favorable rates, but Didi was available in almost all cities of the country. As a result, the Chinese service bought the rights to Uber China for $35 billion. Uber investors own 20% of Didi shares, and in addition, according to anonymous sources, Chinese company invested a billion dollars in American Uber.
Chinese residents usually pay for trips to Didi using local payment systems: Union Pay, Alipay and Baidu Wallet. Foreign tourists usually do not have cards for these services, so they often provide cash services. The company's management expects to develop the direction of self-driving cars in the coming years. To do this, in March 2017 the company opened a laboratory in California.
Didi is used by about 400 million people. The approximate number of users who have downloaded the application ranges from 100 to 500 million people. In 2016, the head of Uber, Travis Kalanick, said that 40 million people use the American service every month.
Taobao Online Store
Workers at a Taobao branch in a Chinese village. AP Photo
One of the world's largest online stores selling various goods. The assortment includes air and ground transport, rare food from exotic countries, plants, Appliances, collector's editions of books, rare comics and household goods. Any registered user can sell and buy goods, and prices, even taking into account shipments to another country, attract customers from Europe and the USA.
In many populated areas In China, about 10% of the population engages in online trading via an app. One of the problems with Taobao, for which the service has been repeatedly criticized, is the sale of low-quality items. These complaints, however, do not deter the approximately 400 million monthly users of the service. eBay at the same time - 179 million people.
Tantan dating app
Tantan interface. Photo by Toronto Star
The operating principle of Tantan repeats the well-known American service - by swiping left or right, the user decides whether he wants to communicate with the proposed person or not. Options are selected taking into account the selected filters and the user’s geographic location.
Similar to its US counterpart Seamless, Meituan is a customer location and offers products in stores or services in all major cities in China, based on filters such as rating, price and distance. The design of Meituan is almost identical to the foreign version.
The application is used not only by people looking for great discounts, but also by those who want to order food. Couriers deliver not only Chinese food, but also pizza, hamburgers or fried potatoes. You can pay for your order using an electronic wallet, including using WeChat. Delivery is available in all major cities in China.
In 2009, the authors of Weibo came up with the basic concept of Twitter, which is now blocked in China: the post should not be longer than 140 characters, users can be retweeted, and a person can be addressed using a tag in front of his name. In January 2016, Weibo authors increased the number of characters in posts to 2000, while comments on them remain limited to 140 characters.
In addition to text posts, users can publish music, videos and photos, as well as communicate using emoji. The app also has a wallet function. Unregistered Weibo visitors cannot write or comment on posts.
On Weibo, speak out on topics related to politics or repression in China. Officially, the government is a resource and requires that real user names be included in the registration system. Weibo has 313 million monthly users.