How China is Cashing in on Group Chats

https://a16z.com/2019/09/06/china-is-cashing-in-on-group-chats/

by jmsflknr • 7 years ago

142 42 7 years ago

So we are essentially talking about a more accessible and immediate forum, not really anything more; this forum you are currently reading, transposed into a group chat functionality, like the yahoo chat rooms of the 90s, on mobile. That’s all this group chat thing is. But whatever, let’s do this, “what a genus and wonderful innovation. It’s definitely worth $100 billion, pre-money!”

duguxu• 7 years ago

It's definitely worth $100 billion today if it will be "worth" (valued) $200 billion tomorrow.

dfischer2• 7 years ago

Personally I’ve been working on Chat based commerce in the U.S for over 5 years now... crazy. The adoption in US markets is definitely slower compared to SEA. Habits and behavior are much more in favor of mobile, and specifically chat for everything experiences in SEA. WeChat is the prime example that doesn’t have a strong comparison in the West.

However, the tide is here past the hype of “Chat Bots” and I’m happy to be working on this problem for helping people find jobs. Messaging is the ultimate form of UX. Communicate it, and it’s done.

At Edvo, we’re having a lot of positive feedback from the job seeker side over Messenger. We have a lot to work on still but, definitely see and feel the adoption of messaging based commerce and general ux.

It’ll be interesting how that transitions in a post mobile era. I’m excited!

Hendrikto• 7 years ago

Messaging is the ultimate form of UX

Bold claim. I do not think this is true outside of very specific use-cases.

kees99• 7 years ago

Retail customer support is one such use-case. In the Netherlands, national railway company, many banks, telecoms, etc - all have webchat/twitter dm/whatsapp contact options prominently displayed either alongside phone numbers or replacing them altogether:

https://www.ns.nl/klantenservice/contact

https://www.ing.nl/particulier/klantenservice

https://www.robinmobile.nl/klantenservice

ThomPete• 7 years ago

It's the most used form of interaction. Text messaging.

snazz2• 7 years ago

If you’re interacting with a human, I’ll argue that synchronous messaging is the most efficient and comfortable way to communicate. Imagine how much faster customer service problems are to solve that way than with a ticketing system, email, or phone (where you have to wait on hold and one operator can only help one person at a time).

snaky• 7 years ago

Wait for Boeing to announce new pilot UX - no more that stupid screens, just chat bot.

dfischer2• 7 years ago

Messaging : communication. Basically meaning not visual Ui. Communicate it and it is done. Input interface specific.

narrator2• 7 years ago

"On WeChat, for example, group chats are discovered entirely by word-of-mouth or QR code—there is no global search option. The QR code is automatically disabled once a group reaches 100 members. Once the group grows to that size, users can only join if invited by a friend; groups are capped at 500. This means that even large group chats have a built-in social filter, since anyone who joins the group is likely the friend of at least one other existing group member. As a result, every group feels like a secret, known only to other members."

I couldn't imagine Facebook limiting group size. It seems like mass groupings and mass trends are kind of the bread and butter of western culture. I am reminded of how anti "Sorcery of the Spectacle" this is.

* The paranoia about mass action in china has created a new kind of artificial collectivism/individualism hybrid: The capped size group. * We are seeing a new form of social organziation! People, this is momentus! Seriously, go read "Sorcery of the Spectacle" again and think deeply about what this means. It's practically a re-conquering by the proletariat of the social sphere!

The no global search thing is crazy. You actually have to know people who tell you about things? How absurdly 1990s! The whole thing reminds me a bit of the mailing list culture of the late 90s. That all got eaten by Facebook groups, but it could have been something different.

"Cultivating a sense of safety is key. Unlike WhatsApp and Signal, which reveal users’ private cell phone numbers to the group– or the now-defunct chats within Facebook Groups, which exposed users’ real identities–WeChat allows its users to adopt aliases. Those anonymous usernames act as a privacy shield, giving users control over how their identities are displayed. (Though it’s hidden from other group users, WeChat does require a phone number and real-name verification to sign up, which curtails anonymous troll abuse.)"

So they've learned from 4chan!

Proven• 7 years ago

Cultivating a sense of safety is key.

That is ludicrous.

"Cultivating a false sense of safety is key" might have been more accurate.

Does anyone here believe that the commies cannot ready any and all WeChat messages?

FooBarWidget• 7 years ago

This isn't about safety from the government, it is about safety from non-government harassers.

snazz2• 7 years ago

It’s a good idea to cap group chats at a reasonable size—they get unruly long before 500. Global search is appropriate for an asynchronous medium, I think, but this is the correct way to manage group chats, in my opinion. It’s how they work on other platforms as well.

yorwba2• 7 years ago

Group size caps don't do a lot to limit mass trends. Once a group hits the cap, the administrator will simply open a new one and tell everyone to join that instead. People in only one of the groups obviously can't speak to those in the others, but the administrators can make announcements in all groups, which is enough e.g. for organizing a large event.

Even requiring invitations past 100 members doesn't mean you need some kind of personal connection. Instead of the group QR code, organizers can post their personal one and then add everyone to the group who messages them. It might slow down spammers who constantly try to join random groups, because they won't know whom to ask for an invite.

Lack of global search for groups also isn't much of a hurdle, since you can still globally search for posts inviting people to join a group. It does mean that there's a niche for companies who create groups and assign members to them based on some criteria, as described in the article.

And regarding usernames and anonymity: they work a bit differently than you might expect. Every WeChat user has a unique identifier which is random by default, but can be set to something intelligible if you want to make it easier for others to add you by searching. Then there's a global username, which is shown to your contacts and in groups by default. Per-group aliases don't completely override that; you can still find out someone's global username by looking at their profile. So most people set their alias to their real name in groups that require it and stay pseudonymous otherwise. You can also set aliases for your own contacts, which helps recognize people who constantly change their name and avatar.

I hope that clears things up a bit.

188201• 7 years ago

The group size thing is of course easily bypass. It was not intended to be a preventive measure, but a reminder from Big brother that we are watching you. People are required to use real name and other personal information to register and law enforcement can freely read those information. It was not unheard that people would raid by police for their online activity.

So, the group size cap is just a rule to say if your group was not over the cap, you will be fine. If you bypass that somehow, you enter a grey area where the government may or may not inference you depending on the nature of the event.

johnmarcus2• 7 years ago

Oh, and messages are reviewed by the Chinese government for extra security too. You are totally safe.

beautifulfreak• 7 years ago

Do you mean "Society of the Spectacle"? That groups are dehumanizing, the product becomes the relationship? I think it's more as if they've rediscovered AOL chatrooms, with AOL style aliases and rooms. People naturally enjoy talking with each other, just shooting the breeze, but I can see how these groups would be a real help towards making a purchase decision. (In the West, advertising (which IS "spectacular") is supposed to tip the balance and make our purchase decisions for us.) I don't see how putting a cap on group size is sinister. AOL chatrooms with only 20 users produced so much text it was often hard to keep up or to engage in anything like a conversation, so 500 people typing all at once would be impossible to comprehend. I'd mainly be worried about product shills, less so about outright fraud.

narrator2• 7 years ago

Yeah I meant "Society of the Spectacle". Whoops. There's a great subreddit devoted to the book called "Sorcery of the Spectacle" that confused me.

countryqt30• 7 years ago

China WANTS to disable all mass groupings as they endanger the government and political stability.

bakuninsbart• 7 years ago

Who is China in that claim? Of course the chinese central government has stake in big tech (and the economy at large), but simply claiming that "China wants this" is extremely reductionist. Tencent was privately founded and funded, and is internationally owned.

There are most certainly close ties to the central government, and they won't go against core demands of the PCR. But they are regularly picking fights and mending the borders of what is considered appropriate.

There is no official rule against having bigger group chat sizes, in fact it exists on other social media. - It might have been an inofficial directive from some ministry, it might have other reasons. From what I can spot, there's not a whole lot of users complaining about the chat restrictions anyway.

dragonsh2• 7 years ago

Well this sows seeds of mistrust. If commerce infiltrate our private conversation, it turn from convenience to creepy.

Every conversation will invoke a feeling that someone is trying to sell something for profit.

This is one of the issues in modern commerce in China.

llarsson• 7 years ago

Sounds like a whole platform built for MLM type of commerce. Somebody you ostensibly trust and think you know just tries to sell you stuff.

PakG1• 7 years ago

Social commerce would be different from MLM though. MLM has incentive to recruit salespeople and then profit off of the salespeople you recruit, usually several levels down. This creates immense pressure on those at the bottom, as their revenue potential is much more difficult to realize. China started heavily regulating MLM due to the social problems it was creating among a large populace that was only still just starting to develop their economy. M without the multiple levels (ML from MLM) is completely different and still feasible in this social setting.

iforgotpassword• 7 years ago

How so? Nobody forces you to join such a group, or is trying to hide the fact that it's commercial.

If I booked a vacation with some company and they offered me to join their WhatsApp group specific to my destination I see nothing wrong with that. The reason we don't have that here is probably that it's too expensive. In China you can hire someone for next to nothing to monitor some WeChat groups and have them answer frequent questions or extract potentially useful new information from other users conversation in that group. Shouldn't be too surprising and if you don't want this, don't join. Like when you're uncomfortable with sharing random recordings from your home with Amazon, don't buy Alexa.

galuggus• 7 years ago

This is very compatible with Chinese culture. It is very normal to do business (even very small transactions) with your friend group. This is partly because of very low levels of trust in society and partly to keep money from leaving your social group.

contingencies4• 7 years ago

If commerce infiltrate our private conversation, it turn from convenience to creepy. Every conversation will invoke a feeling that someone is trying to sell something for profit. This is one of the issues in modern commerce in China.

Err, WeChat doesn't have any advertising, notably unlike Google and Facebook.

adventured• 7 years ago

Err, WeChat doesn't have any advertising, notably unlike Google and Facebook.

What? WeChat does have advertising.

"So what does advertising on WeChat look like? For the most part, ads on WeChat are similar to those seen across most social platforms. Brands can create Official Accounts that users can choose to subscribe to."

"Brands can also raise awareness by running paid campaigns focused on driving new users to subscribe to their official account."

"Other paid popular paid tactics include display banner ads and WeChat Moments. Moments are essentially WeChat’s version of Facebook ads. These populate in a user’s social feed so that they appear native and unintrusive. Advertisers can choose to either place up to six static photos or up to 6-15 second videos."

https://www.pmg.com/blog/3-things-to-know-about-advertising-...

"Since Tencent announced WeChat advertising in 2015, we have now helped dozens of brands launch campaigns on the platform."

https://www.shenglidigital.com/blog/why-advertisers-should-c...

"A Comprehensive Guide to WeChat Advertising"

https://tenbagroup.com/chinese-marketing/a-comprehensive-gui...

"Advertising on WeChat: cost, format, targeting, rules & regulations"

https://wechatwiki.com/wechat-resources/wechat-advertising-m...

thunderbong• 7 years ago

This is a seriously interesting article. I've never thought of chat applications the way these guys are doing it.

simplecomplex2• 7 years ago

WeChat is a financial disaster for all we know. Tencent doesn’t share any financials. Internet chat has always been hugely popular. Building a profitable business out of Internet chat has not been so easy historically. Historically, successful free chat software have been loss leaders (FB messenger for FB, yahoo messenger, AIM for AOL). Snapchat has never made money. LINE is the only chat app I know of to really turn a profit from just their app, and it has come at the expense of active users and squeezing more advertising into the app.

Odd title “cashing in” considering there’s no talk of the business behind WeChat...

coolspot• 7 years ago

Doesn’t WeChat is shopping and payment monopoly in China?

I heard you can’t even order ramen without using WeChat/WePay.

kwizzt• 7 years ago

By no means is WeChat a shopping or payment monopoly. There's Taobao and Alipay by Alibaba. From what I know they are fairly even in terms of market share (payment). WeChat's shopping scene is mostly on a very small scale and personal level.

contingencies4• 7 years ago

WeChat is a financial disaster for all we know.

1.4 billion people use it as their dominant payment method. Not mobile payment method, but payment method full stop. I think it's safe to say they're incredibly profitable.

simplecomplex2• 7 years ago

They could be losing money on 1.4 billion in transactions. Their super low transaction fees might indicate WeChat Pay is a loss leader.

That’s my point. Tencent intentionally hides WeChat in their financials. You assume it’s wildly profitable because Tencent is. Usually when a company tries to hide the financial narrative of a product it’s not because it’s doing great.

“We consider payment at this point in time as to [sic] infrastructure service rather than a service that generates profit for us. And I think that status will maintain for quite some time,” Martin Lau

mark_l_watson• 7 years ago

I like the idea of building small groups on platforms like WeChat, especially the online school. Sounds like a good way to leverage one instructor helping 100 students.

The big problem however is getting locked in on one proprietary platform. I guess what we can realistically hope for is for there to be three or four big players and competition will keep them from being exploitive monopolies.

I still think that we are going to end up with a world out of William Gibson’s cyber punk sci-fi novels: a few mega corporations with small groups, arcologies, and individual hustlers living on platforms they don’t control. A mixture of mega corps with small scale entrepreneurs.

kajmagnusmobile• 7 years ago

What about not only the teacher helping the students, but the students also helping each other?

And each question can get it's own topic -- there's a chat but it need not be used for everything?

And, an open source platform? A university can choose to install on their own server.

Then have a look at Talkyard:

https://www.talkyard.io/use-cases (I'm developing it)

johnmarcus2• 7 years ago

This reads like it was written by a Chinese government official trying to sway HK protesters. WeChat asks for so much personal info in order to onboard, and your messages are definitely monitored and censored by the government - funny how they left out that tiny detail. It is the exact opposite of privacy and secure messaging.

How China is Cashing in on Group Chats

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