The New York Times
1 HN recommender · recommended in 4 months, 2016–2017
5:58 · 2.2M views · Aug 9, 2016
A New York Times video on how China's sheltered internet produced a new breed of apps, centering on WeChat's all-in-one model combining payments, social and services. It suggests American companies are now taking cues from Chinese tech.
HN cites it as a concise explanation of why WeChat's super-app model is so dominant and why people worry about copycats.
5 comments from Hacker News
This video from NYT explains it what makes WeChat revolutionary as a platform: this video tl;dw The revolution alludes to the fact that one app is taking over everything from social networking, mobile payments, food, ticket sales, ride-hailing, financial products, bill payments, and much more.
I agree. It is an evolving medium which is reinventing itself. But saying that users are the ultimate ruler is not entirely accurate, to put it lightly. Technically, the ultimate ruler is the one (who controls the person) who can produce the private keys or passwords for the 'core systems'. When most of your personal information, friends, your communication and organisation tools are behind one single account, that account now becomes very valuable. If someone then decides to deny you access to your account - for whatever reason - you're practically excluded from the platform where everyone else is.. A digital outcast. This is very different from the 'widespread communication network with no central command where everyone and their dog can participate'. True, this system might be more convenient for users and advertisers right now, but in the long term this can have strange repercussions, like companies totally 'owning' people's lives. this video
Friend I knew, USAF reserve, served in Bosnia, worked at one of the major CC companies in the 1990s. He related the story of talking to a friend in national intelligence. The FoaF: "You've got more data on people than we do." Related: "China's Internet" (Bloomberg video) this video The War on Cash: [LINK] (Also discussed at HN.)
What I am worried about is that Facebook/Google/Microsoft/Amazon/Apple are copying the same model [1]. These companies are killing the open web. [1] How China Is Changing Your Internet (The New York Times) - this video
Well, Facebook is not so much of a threat as WeChat is in China. this video Basically all apps converge into WeChat, and there is absolutely no way to avoid it.