Fair enough, but does WhatsApp put out any market in China? The strategy is a completely different approach. WhatsApp simply building 1 product for the entire globe where WeChat just focus on 1 monoculture.
Have WhatsApp spent effort to build "that product" to China, and they would fail on it.
And I don't see WhatsApp is super pissed that they lost this 1.3B market anyway.
And in a hindsight, it is probably better for WhatsApp to not build "that app" for China. Imagine spending all those resources, money into a product and simply turn off by China government overnight. It's a big loss for that investment.
TL;DR do not enter China if you haven't yet finished conquered the entire world.
I live in the Bay Area and I use both WhatsApp and WeChat and I would say WeChat is a significantly better product, with more features and better video/audio quality. When I visit China, WeChat is another order of magnitude more indispensable due to its great integration with all the other services (eg, mobile payment penetration through WeChat effectively 100%).
From the UX point of view, it's pretty lightweight for most common operations. Goes into the app, finds the contact, sends message, done. There is virtually no difference between WeChat, WhatsApp, and Apple's own Messages. For many other operations that are less common, WeChat is easier to use and manage (e.g. sending emojis, voice memo, photos).
From an app size point of view, I just checked on my iPhone. WeChat takes up 157.3MB, whereas WhatsApp takes up 105.9MB. The difference seems minor (just a few photos).
Let see...
- Why do I care about reading someone's life moment on an IM? WhatsApp also tried this and another reason I think it is now heading to the "dark side"
- Why do I said... Request a Didi on an IM ?
- Why would I care to use it to pay for something? I just want to message someone.
- Why do I even care about these features? I just want to message someone...
- In fact, why do I care about so much eye-killing gifs/emoji
An IM is an IM. But then I grew up in the western world, so my opinions might not apply to everyone. But I am sure as hell share someone's opinion on this.
Is it bloated? Hell yeah, can it still make a case that Chinese general population would prefer bloated single-app? Sure, but that doesn't mean I like it.
>Why do I even care about these features? I just want to message someone...
You care that the other person will be on it too. But why will they be on it？
Mass adoption isnt just about what you want, its about what other people on the same service want as well. It has to offer a superset of your wants, her wants, his wants, etc or you will love it, but they will go elsewhere. Its not all about you. Having everyone on it is THE killer feature.
My wife is Chinese to I use WeChat a fair bit. I only use it for messaging and calling, so can’t comment on the other features, but for what I use it seems fast, stable and easy to use.
How do you distinguish between featureful and bloated? What are the criteria you would use to tell one from the other?
Personally I don't think it's too bloated. However, its an absolute storage hog ~ My WeChat is taking up 2.4gig of storage space. I guess thats the issue of audio messages alongside the ability to send full-quality images.
WeChat's success is something I find... strange. I just thought uses don't want everything and the kitchen sink in the same app but we chat success story shows I'm wrong? I still don't get it.
I have that Facebook messenger even has draw over other apps permission on Android. I hate the pop up chat. Am I out of touch?
Being able to send money to people via chat app is pretty appealing to many people.
Also, there was a post on here highlighting Japanese web design and you might say it's also a kitchen sink approach. And then someone posted, or the article updated and added(I don't remember exactly) some nice links to show that the exact same design phenomenon exists in major websites in Taiwan, Korea, and China.
We might theorize that users in these particular markets might want everything but the kitchen sink in one app, or one website. I'm not saying that's necessarily the case, but there's definitely some indicators.
Would be very interesting if it's a case of actual rejection of western style minimalistic designs, rather than something like it being all they've known and thus have simply gotten used to.
Have WhatsApp spent effort to build "that product" to China, and they would fail on it.
And I don't see WhatsApp is super pissed that they lost this 1.3B market anyway.
And in a hindsight, it is probably better for WhatsApp to not build "that app" for China. Imagine spending all those resources, money into a product and simply turn off by China government overnight. It's a big loss for that investment.
TL;DR do not enter China if you haven't yet finished conquered the entire world.