entranceWhat is wechat in china. A lot of money from nothing: Meet WeChat, the world's most expensive messenger
The first thing China starts with is the Wechat mobile app. You can't live here without him, he replaces everything for the Chinese - the messenger, and the social network, and the dating site, and Skype, and Instagram, and the Internet wallet, and the translator. On the subway, on the bus, in the dentist's chair, and at the local bathhouse, they all go to WeChat. Without it, nowhere.
What it is
WeChat is the Chinese equivalent of Wotsapp. 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 KewCu, a popular social network in Asia. So Wechat was doomed to succeed.
Posts
WeChat maintains a bunch of different formats- you can send a text or voice message, record a video, take a photo, show your location, create a short animation image, send money.
Most often, the Chinese send audio messages. At first I did not understand what the trick was - why talk, if you can print? But after a few days of active testing, I became convinced that dictating messages is very cool and fast. And it's also very funny when complete strangers send voice messages - your imagination is activated and you begin to imagine what kind of person he is, how he looks. Now, at every opportunity, I say everything with my voice.
In addition, you can make audio and video calls through Wechat. If Skype and others similar services work very slowly in China, then everything flies with Wechat. So now I communicate with relatives and colleagues through this messenger.
The most important thing
Any Internet project, almost all shops, most establishments have their own group in Wechat. In it, the guys post messages, which means you can quickly track the news. All such groups are placed in a separate "Subscriptions" folder 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.
What I like the most is the quick contact addition. To add another person as a friend, you can drive in his nickname, phone number or scan an individual quar code, which is issued by Wechat himself. You point the camera at the display of another smartphone and the person is in your contacts. It is incredibly convenient when meeting people and when you urgently need to resolve some issue with the Chinese, and you do not know the Chinese language.
This is 小秋. He works in a skate shop and doesn't know a word of English. But we have already managed to make friends and fully understand each other, communicating when we meet through Wechat.
Featured by foreigners - the ability to automatically translate any message. That is, if a Japanese sends a message to a German in Wechat, he will be able to translate it and respond in his native German dialect, which, in turn, will be able to translate the Japanese and rejoice modern technologies... So WeChat is pretty damn convenient when it comes to 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. At the same time, most of these kiosks do not support payment by credit card, and through Wechat - no problem.
Back in December 2017, news appeared on the Web that the Chinese messenger. It is considered one of the most popular in the world and the only one operating in China.
The government has long taken the messenger under total control, so many may already forget about the secrecy of correspondence.
The most popular messenger in China, WeChat, has always maintained a close relationship with the Chinese government. Moreover, he was taken under control already in 2011.
WeChat will now play an even bigger role. We are currently working on integrating WeChat with the electronic identification system in China.
It is getting harder and harder for WeChat users to abandon the messenger. - Yuhua Wang, a former Shanghai resident who wrote "How WeChat is Becoming a Huge Part of Our Lives" for the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism
Foreigners tend to download a messaging app to stay connected. Other US apps are banned in the country.
WeChat is already ready to identify citizens
WeChat is now poised to become an electronic identification system for Chinese citizens, Xinhua reported. The company will issue virtual IDs that people will use in place of government-issued physical IDs.
You can register in the messenger only with a real name, the identifiers do not change afterwards.
Harvard Business School professor Willie Shih (co-author of the WeChat case study) calls the move to electronic identification a "predictable evolution."
How was the testing of issuing virtual IDs
The project has already passed test mode, which began in December last year. To participate in the pilot program, users opened a WeChat widget to apply for a certificate.
After that, WeChat issued a digital black and white ID card that works for more informal use. For example, to register at an Internet cafe (in China, you must provide a login ID).
Users can also apply to upgrade to color ID. It can be used to banking operations and business registration. You can also set an eight-digit password to protect your accounts. And facial recognition technology will be used to verify applicants in order to avoid fraud.
In addition, the app will record the person's fingerprint and card chip from their respective physical ID.
In 2016, the Wuhan Public Security Bureau in Hubei Province, China, partnered with Alipay to launch a similar electronic system identification.
However, after testing 400,000 users, the project stopped working. Therefore, only WeChat remained.
Many people still worry about data privacy
Many users began to worry about the confidentiality of information provided by WeChat. And all after the messenger became controlled by the state.
The company itself states that it stores data only "for as long as necessary" in order to "comply with applicable laws and regulations."
Earlier this month, businessman Li Shufu stated that general manager Tencent (WeChat owner) Ma Huateng "must follow all of our chats every day."
The company denied this fact.
However, WeChat is considered the most controlled messenger no matter what the company representatives say.
But even if the company says otherwise, technical level it does not provide users with much protection from government surveillance. Tencent scored 0 out of 100 for WeChat's lack of free speech protection and end-to-end encryption. - excerpt from Amnesty report
Tencent does not say when the government asks for user data and does not give any details about the type of encryption, if any.
AngelHack's Matt Wright is confident that ordinary users absolutely not interesting to the state.
As long as you are not doing anything weird or plotting against the government, they are not going to dig into your data.
Many experts say, in essence, the same thing: "This is not a problem because you do not have sensitive data."
WeChat's growth in China has been accompanied by censorship of foreign apps, government subsidies, and integration with government agencies... And now a step towards even greater integration of the messenger towards identifying users by ID will make it truly official app China. [
Is a mobile application for active online communication, which was able to oust such giants as WhatsApp, Viber from the Chinese market and confidently took a leading position in the most populous country in the world.
Creators WeChat China(in Chinese 微 信 - Weixin) is a corporation Tencent ... The first release of the application was released in 2011.
To date, more than 1 billion accounts have already been opened in WeChat, more than 600 million people use the application every day, which makes Wechat one of the largest players in the mobile market.
When you use the application for the first time, it is difficult to say that it delights in its convenience or design; rather, on the contrary, for a foreign user, everything is rather unusual - Chinese emoticons pop up, various GIF animations with talking eggs, dragons and other similar things.
When you gradually get used to it and discover the full functionality of the application, you realize that it is really brilliant! Using the "Wallet" panel, you can link your Union Pay bank card to this application, which will open up opportunities for you incredible in scale and you will be able to fully experience the scale of the development of the Chinese economy.
What does the "Wallet" function do?
1. Instantly transfer money to any user on your friend list (up to RMB 10,000 at a time). You just go to the chat with a friend and press the "Transfer" button, indicate the required amount and press send. That's all the math.
2. Pay for purchases in shops, terminals, machines.
Especially in China, WeChat money reception is used in fruit shops, Family Mart grocery stores and other small shops.
To pay for the goods, you go to the "Wallet", click "Quick Pay" and a QR code appears on the screen of your smartphone, which the seller kindly scans and at the same moment issues you a receipt confirming the successful payment.
3. Buy train and plane tickets both domestically and internationally.
4. Order and pay for a taxi.
5. Book and buy cinema tickets.
6. Do charity work
7. Pay utility bills
8. Order food
9. Send red money envelopes (Hongbao 红包) with a certain predetermined amount.
The Chinese are very fond of receiving money in red envelopes (it happened historically - tradition).
When the user clicks on the envelope, the congratulation programmed by the sender pops up and an amount of money appears, which is instantly transferred to the recipient's balance. In WeChat, you can easily upload your photos (or "moments"), mini-videos in real time, record voice messages, make audio and video calls, use a large collection of free emoticons, send your location to friends and more.
The Chinese messenger WeChat 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 of this.
In early 2017, WeChat, a Chinese messenger with an audience of over 800 million and an estimated value of over $ 80 billion, revealed ambitious new plans: it wants to become a platform for mobile applications, that is, to focus on itself the entire smartphone ecosystem. And this is part of the global trend: Gartner analysts write that platforms are replacing mobile applications, because users do not want to download another application, they want to get new opportunities on already installed ones, for example, 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 knew them,” writes Techcrunch.
App for everything
“My whole huge family lives in China - parents, uncles, aunts. And they all use WeChat all the time to chat, transfer money and more, ”says New York-based product designer Sherri Wong. Wong's parents are typical Chinese consumers. In this country, 90% of users go online with mobile device and on average, a third of their time is spent on WeChat, writes Bloomberg.
“WeChat is not just an app, as many people think. This is a superstructure over operating system... Most of the Chinese start WeChat and do everything that is possible on the Internet in it, ”says Dmitry Artsyukh, an entrepreneur and digital expert living in Shanghai. This app integrates PayPal, Yelp, Amazon, Uber, TripAdvisor, Slack, Spotify, Tinder and more. WeChat pay rent, look for parking, manage investments, make appointments, donate to charity, date strangers, and more.
What's more, WeChat has features that delight even sophisticated Americans. “If you shake your smartphone, the app will show the accounts of nearby WeChat users,” said Sam Force, director of sales for the US-Lebanese company Band Industries, which has a manufacturing site in China. “The Chinese are embarrassed to approach strangers, so it helps them a lot,” he said.
Visitors from Europe and the USA are surprised by the widespread use of QR codes and barcodes in WeChat, which the application recognizes using the phone's camera. With their help, you can join online communities, buy coffee, go to a conference. Initially, according to Artsyukh, QR codes that came from Japan were supposed to solve the problem of expanding the WeChat audience. The fact is that rare hieroglyphs are often used in Chinese names, which not everyone knows, and it is difficult to catch them by ear. Accordingly, the problem arose - how to add each other as friends. But if, using the appropriate application, 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 a great achievement.
As a result, the messenger replaces cash and bank cards with accompanying PIN codes and payment terminals - to enter the data for payment, it is enough to scan the barcode. According to Denis Makkaveev, ex-director of development at Alibaba.com, this function is used everywhere: “So far I have encountered problems with acceptance only at some gas stations and government agencies. Last year I have very seldom taken cash with me. "
Money on 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 knows how to make money.
Facebook is just starting to experiment with messenger ads, and WeChat is already generating advertising revenues. According to a report by Tencent, a 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 ads, mainly through posting on the news feed and official WeChat celebrity accounts, as well as other news. mobile applications 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 of the world, for $ 19 billion). How much exactly WeChat earns is not reported in the Tencent report, and the holding did not respond to RBC's request. According to the estimates of the Chinese consulting company BDA, which is cited by The Economist, WeChat brought in $ 1.8 billion in revenue in 2015. According to the publication, more than half of WeChat's revenue comes from games, with transaction fees and advertising accounting for a significant share.
WeChat has evolved into an e-commerce platform that Facebook is only aspiring to. WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are not yet monetized, although Mark Zuckerberg in November 2016 promised to do so in the future. “WeChat could be called the Chinese Facebook, but there is a fundamental difference: all my acquaintances are constantly buying things through WeChat,” says Sherri Wong. Even the accounts of celebrities that are familiar to Twitter or Facebook users have turned into shops on WeChat - souvenirs from idols are sold directly through the messenger, and the application takes royalties from each transaction.
At the same time, in terms of audience, WeChat is still inferior to key Western competitors that have excelled at the global level. WhatsApp crossed the 1 billion mark in February 2016, Facebook Messenger in July 2016, and WeChat has yet to hit the round figure, with 889 million monthly users by the end of 2016.
What is Tencent
Tencent was founded in 1998 by Ma Huateng (middle name is Pony Ma) and Zhang Zhidong. Born in 1971, Huateng studied computer programming at university, and before founding Tencent, he worked for China Motion Telecom Development (internet paging development) and Runxun Communications. Initially, he and his friends raised investments for an ICQ clone, which the entrepreneur saw during a business trip to the United States. While startups were looking for investments, Huateng combined business management with part-time jobs as a designer and janitor.
Photo: Liang Xu / Zuma / TASS
Tencent is now one of the three largest Internet holdings in China, rivaling Alibaba and Baidu in scale. Since 2014, Tencent has been listed on the Hong Kong Exchange. 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). In the third quarter of 2016, Tencent generated over $ 6 billion in revenue and over $ 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 game company Riot Games, 80% of the Finnish Supercell, which created the famous game Clash of Clans, a stake in the Russian Mail.Ru Group and even a minority stake in Tesla. Tencent's assets include many services - social networks, news apps, 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 like a social network, for example, Odnoklassniki, says Artsyukh. Tencent executives spotted boom in industry mobile internet and tasked two teams to bring QQ functionality to the new mobile environment. One of the projects in 2011 and became the basis of WeChat.
WeChat's success in China has been driven by several factors. First of all, the features of market regulation, namely, protectionism on the part of the Chinese government: in China there is no Google play Therefore, it is not easy for Western messengers to accumulate an audience.
“There are many barriers to entering China, but the most significant are government policies and the Chinese mentality - these are the features that play into the hands of WeChat,” said Sergei Kushnarenko, director of business development at Borscht agency. - In a market with a capacity of more than 1 billion people and in a country that was experiencing a boom in new affordable Android smartphones combined 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 country. As a result, WeChat has been ahead of all well-known instant messengers for years, which is a huge number in the mobile industry. ” The most important factor Dmitry Artsyukh calls the "natural barrier", that is Chinese which WhatsApp switched to too late.
Finally, there have been breakthrough business solutions in the history of WeChat. For example, a successful marketing campaign helped convince people to link their bank cards to chat, according to Connie Chan, partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
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 was not new in itself - a similar campaign was carried out by Alibaba. 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 took the whole bank. Red envelopes have become an organic part of WeChat, and Tencent even writes about them in their financial statements. 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 for the further growth of WeChat is its locality. In theory, a messenger with rich functionality could be popular all over the world. In practice, Tencent really tried to enter different markets with it, but it did not work out.
In 2012, one of the top managers of the company announced its intentions to go international. The company signed an advertising contract with soccer star Lionel Messi, tried to shoot Bollywood-style ads to break into India, and finally released a version of the app for overseas users with fewer features. But this did not lead to success. According to App Annie, WeChat is not even in the top 100 in most countries in the world, with the exception of, of course, China.
“WeChat is for those who live in China. It is fully adapted for online and offline business in China and for a Chinese user. We are simply not comfortable using WeChat outside of China. He has a specific design that does not take into account the many needs of the Western user. For example, until now the words in the Russian version are not carried over, ”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 close all the interests of users on the messenger. Now you can create so-called mini programs on the WeChat platform (the word apps Tencent did not allow Apple to use). Mini programs are simplified and lightweight versions of applications. Thus, WeChat is now turning into an app store like App Store and Google Play.
But competitors are not asleep either. While WeChat invades Apple and Google, some of its functionality is taken over by Facebook. 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.
Block IP addresses associated with Telegram, which was blocked in Russia for refusing to provide encryption keys to the authorities. Millions of entries have been made to the register of banned sites. The first to unload were network addresses Amazon and Google. Later, users noticed problems with the Odnoklassniki social network, the Viber messenger and the Spotify streaming service. For technical reasons, ATMs of different banks do not work from time to time. At the same time, Roskomnadzor does not consider this damage significant.
The most famous example of Internet blocking is the Great Firewall of China. Since the 2000s, access to Facebook, Google, YouTube and other well-known resources has been closed in the country. The official reason is the fight against extremism. We spoke with Russians from China about how they live in a country with limited access in Internet.
The beginning of the problems
Alexander Maltsev
editor-in-chief of the online edition about China "Magazet"
I ended up in China almost 20 years ago, in 1999. And at that time there were no big problems with the foreign Internet, it was just that it took a very long time to open everything, hung in comparison with Chinese sites. And even now, while speeds have changed since then, the foreign Internet is much slower than the Chinese one. Chinese videos load many times faster than foreign videos, even unblocked ones.
In the early 2000s, there was news about the blocking of popular resources: Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook. And of course, for foreigners living in China, this came as an unpleasant surprise. Other sites were also blocked - for example, with opposition political topics. Then online proxies began to gain popularity, where it was possible to drive in the site address, and it opened in a separate frame. Finally, there was VPN. VPN in China is a must-have tool that almost every expat living here and some Chinese people have.
How does blocking work?
Now in China, almost all major foreign social networks are blocked and informational resources who are not accountable to the Chinese authorities. Twitter, Facebook - wherever you poke, everything is blocked. Many messengers are blocked, for example WhatsApp and Telegram. When a resource is blocked, the user is not warned in any way that this site is blocked. The site simply doesn't respond, and the browser throws an error. Empirically or on special sites, you can check whether it is not available only from you or throughout China. Naturally, this causes great discomfort, especially for foreigners.
As for the indigenous population of China, the restriction for the use of foreign sites is not so much in blocking as in the language barrier. Much less Chinese know English compared to the same Russia. On the other hand, in China, its own alternatives appeared very quickly: instead of Wikipedia, there are several other similar encyclopedias, the largest of them is Baidu, instead of Facebook there are many different social networks - for example, Renren.com, instead of Twitter - Weibo, instead of the messenger - WeChat. By the way, the latter is a super app combining payment system, social network with a friend and communication.
Therefore, the Chinese themselves are not very tormented by the lack of direct access to foreign sites. For those who want to bypass blockages, this is not difficult. In online stores and marketplaces, for example Taobao, you can type in the words "VPN" or 翻墙 ("fan qiang") in the search for goods, which translates as "to get over the wall." There are many all sorts of applications with VPN and proxy for phone and desktop, allowing you to quickly and cheaply bypass all obstacles.
Living with a VPN
Since I am a foreigner myself in China and work on the Internet, I use a VPN. It practically does not turn off - only in those cases when I need, for example, to use Chinese resources, because with the VPN turned on, Chinese resources are bad and slow, and sometimes they do not open at all. You won't be able to watch a video on a Chinese hosting with a VPN. We also use local counterparts: even foreigners actively use WeChat as a messenger and means of payment.
Telegram, however, is not universally banned in China. It all very much depends on the provider and the region. For some, it does not work at all, for some, only push notifications work, for some, only messages are visible, but pictures do not, for some, everything works without problems. We have noticed empirically that Telegram works better when it is linked to a Russian mobile number.
WeChat has great amount channels for expats living and working in China, there, of course, discussions are popular about which VPN is the best, how it is more convenient to bypass blockages. Therefore, foreigners quickly find ways to bypass the Great Firewall of China.
Golden Shield rules
Daria Baranikhina
The Chinese Internet is, in principle, not the fastest thing. As far as I know, it is in the second hundred in the ranking of countries in terms of internet speed. Even if you use sites on Chinese hosting, they will work much slower than, for example, in neighboring Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan.
AND main feature which primarily affects foreigners is the blocking. The state program, which constantly monitors and blocks more and more resources, is called the "Golden Shield". In English it sounds like Great Firewall. But it is important to understand that this is not a prohibition, but a blocking. If this were a ban, we would not have the right to use blocked sites. Now we are simply limited by the government in using the site, but in no way limited in ways of circumvention. There are no penalties for this. Therefore, we freely buy VPN services and VPN accounts and use the sites that we need.
Many resources are blocked: from Google and its services (Calendar, Maps, Gmail) to social media Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and messenger WhatsApp... There are resources that open in China, but with limited functionality or blocked materials. For example, if we want to find information about June 4, 1989 in Wikipedia, we will be thrown out of the page. This is an event that claimed the lives of more than a hundred students who rallied in the main square of Beijing. China by hook or by crook is trying to forget about this event. There is even a version that it was for this reason that it was blocked by Google many years ago.
Also, the rules of the "Golden Shield" apply to Chinese sites. They are not allowed to link to foreign sources without the express permission of the Chinese authorities or a special license.
Reasons for blocking
The main version of Facebook blocking is anti-Chinese sentiment in some groups, many anti-communist groups have started organizing offline meetings. Another reason was the database of Chinese users, which was located outside of China, which did not suit the authorities. Facebook did not agree to transfer the data and was blocked. Another story is from Instagram, which was blocked not so long ago, in 2014. A few days earlier, the "umbrella revolution" had begun in Hong Kong, with locals taking to the streets after being informed of a new electoral reform. Hong Kongers posted videos and photos to Instagram right from the scene. WhatsApp and Viber are currently working to send text messages. Voice messages, images and videos are not supported.
VPN is the only way to bypass blocking. Services are paid if you need stability guarantees. The market leaders have a standard price of $ 60 for six months.
WeChat as a replacement for everything
I moved to China in 2012. Then only YouTube, Twitter and Facebook were blocked. Even Google, which was blocked in 2010, still gave access to services like Gmail. Considering that the post office worked, and I did not use social networks very actively, I will not say that I experienced at least some discomfort when I arrived in China. The discomfort began later, when they began to block messengers and slow down the speed. For example, the same "Yandex" - it is not blocked, but it works much slower than a regular Chinese site. There are decent Chinese alternatives to search engines, but I and my foreign friends have no particular desire to use them when they need information in English or Russian.
But a huge bow to the Chinese for the messenger. WeChat is something you can't live without in China, and something that is sorely lacking abroad. WeChat combines best qualities messenger, social networks and applications with video and audio calls. In recent years, WeChat has become a way to pay for any service in China. WeChat Pay works in mountains, forests and small villages. As a guide, I travel a lot, and I have not yet had a single case that I could not pay with a WeChat wallet. The app is irreplaceable and constantly evolving. Probably, this is an example when the Chinese analogue is ahead of the blocked messengers in terms of functions and convenience. The only problem is that relatives, friends and colleagues from Russia do not use WeChat. There is an inconvenience: WeChat does not work when VPN is on. If we want to stay in touch with outside world then we will not be able to log into WeChat. And vice versa. You need to constantly switch.
Get on Instagram
Marina Yushchenko
teacher of English language
In China, Internet censorship is blocking some sites, I will tell you about the problems I encountered on personal experience... Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Odnoklassniki, Twitter, services on the Google platform, YouTube and others do not work. I was without Instagram for the first two days after my arrival, and since I can't imagine my life without it, I quickly learned from my compatriots how to solve this problem. Just downloaded free apps in the App Store, first it was Betternet, then VPN Master - I still use it.
For the phone, it is enough to download the application and turn it on before entering the forbidden applications. But still, even with a VPN, the speed is very low, but thanks for that too. For a laptop, you need a router with a VPN, I did not bother with this, but compatriots often buy. If you want to watch a movie at home, some online movie sites may not be available either.
Before arriving, I changed my Android LG to an iPhone, and this was not at all because I knew that everything was blocked here, but because I wanted to take high-quality photos, but I am happy with this decision. The guys who come to Google with androids generally buy new phones to solve the problem of bypassing locks.