[HN Gopher] Super apps are proliferating across emerging markets
___________________________________________________________________
Super apps are proliferating across emerging markets
Author : ycafrica
Score : 192 points
Date : 2022-09-17 13:35 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (afridigest.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (afridigest.com)
| aunty_helen wrote:
| Rappi. Massive app in Latin America.
|
| The level of usefulness and convenience is astounding. I ordered
| some items I forgot to get at the supermarket the other day,
| arrived in 4 minutes. In my home first world country, next day
| delivery is touted as a massive success by execs on linkedin.
|
| For how powerful Rappi has become, not only did they beat Uber
| Eats completely out of Colombia (their service just isn't at the
| same standard anywhere), but they also beat McDonalds who tried
| to go exclusive with their own app for a year before coming back
| to the platform.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Rappi is great. I use it almost every day. I love how you can
| order cash from the ATM right to your door. Does that exist in
| US delivery apps?
| [deleted]
| axg11 wrote:
| Uber Eats has to build a model that works worldwide, including
| in the US, Canada, UK, EU, etc. where unemployment rates are
| relatively low. I don't think same hour delivery will ever be
| long-term sustainable in a country with low unemployment.
|
| Emerging economies are a different story. Unemployment is
| usually high so there's an abundance of workers to power the
| logistics behind these super apps.
| jorvi wrote:
| > I don't think same hour delivery will ever be long-term
| sustainable in a country with low unemployment.
|
| In Europe we have something called 'flash orders', where your
| groceries are usually delivered within 10 minutes. Way
| crazier than same-day. Like you said, it does make one wonder
| if those companies (Gorillas, Flink, Getir) will ever be
| sustainable long term.
| gfarah wrote:
| I second this. I use rappi about 1-2 a day. They attracted a
| bunch of users using their delivery platform and now they have
| expanded into dug delivery, car insurance, plane tickets and a
| bunch more. They are currently trying to break into financial
| services (now really sure how well this last one will play out
| though).
| hulitu wrote:
| > When users shook their phones in a specific way, they'd be
| connected to others on the Weixin network who had shaken
|
| Compare that with Whatsapp which want access to your phone number
| and contacts.
| djbusby wrote:
| This feature was in Bump in 2008.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| I kinda hate how the "across emerging markets" superapps are just
| the last paragraph and the 98% of the article is about wechat
| which everyone already knows about. How are those superapps doing
| in other markets? That would be interesting information.
| vinibrito wrote:
| Here in Brazil they are not as powerful as WeChat is in China,
| but they are aggressively growing and pushing the market. But
| they are largely a business push force, not a market pull
| force.
| noobermin wrote:
| Grab is doing okay I suppose but it feels like "just another
| app" in SEA, and is mostly used by people for hailing rides.
| The payments are there but very few vendors actually use it.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Can't think of any super apps that are doing well in India, and
| that's a huge market. Our most popular messaging app is
| Whatsapp that only does messaging. Our most popular payments
| app is Google Pay that only does payments.
| toast0 wrote:
| India likes its protectionism. You're not going to get a
| superapp from outside. Maybe Jio would do one?
| poopypoopington wrote:
| WhatsApp is becoming a super app through the buildout of
| business messaging. You can now do your shopping in India
| using the JioMart store on WhatsApp.[1]
|
| [1] https://about.fb.com/news/2022/08/shop-on-whatsapp-with-
| jiom...
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Remains to be seen whether it sees any adoption. Cross
| selling has been incredibly hard in India.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Apple is trying to push out the banking system with their
| payment system.
| neodypsis wrote:
| There have been many attempts to replicate the "super app"
| phenomenon that is WeChat.
| solarmist wrote:
| Wasn't Line the predecessor super app?
| mathverse wrote:
| Not really. Line is a fork of Kakaotalk but now these two
| dont have much in common.
|
| Line is also quite successful in Thailand and Taiwan.
| numpad0 wrote:
| LINE was a clone, not a fork.
|
| I'm not sure about timeline of superapps/in-app-apps
| though, I ... think mobage(moba-gay not mob-age) for i-mode
| phones, was one early example of a portal with messaging +
| apps. LINE replicated that with iOS apps, but more generic
| apps were only implemented in 2019. Either examples were
| rather simplistic games only. Bot-based text interfaces
| similar to various SMS self-serve systems existed for LINE,
| but I believe those were not offered as apps.
|
| WeChat might have been influenced by those predecessors,
| but as far as I can see, in-app mini-apps are understood to
| be a phenomenon originating in China and Southeast Asia,
| even in Japan. So it might be a stretch to call it a
| predecessor or pioneer in superapp, more like one of
| precursors.
| solarmist wrote:
| Ah, yeah. Precursor is a better word.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| I think you are pretty much right on all counts, probably
| except for the very definition of super-apps. I think the
| original article used the term for an app that can serve
| for multiple purposes, not necessarily open to 3rd
| parties. If we follow this definition Kakaotalk or LINE
| are definitely super apps, but WeChat can be considered
| as the second generation super app. (Third party apps in
| Kakaotalk or LINE are still pretty limited in this aspect
| to my knowledge. Kakaotalk in particular seems to have
| assimiliated any third-party interaction into its
| chatting platform.)
| [deleted]
| solarmist wrote:
| Also Japan.
|
| But No, I mean the first widely used app that does all
| kinds of different things.
|
| Not literally a predecessor.
| itake wrote:
| My day job just built a WhatsApp bot to interact with customers
| because our super app was too big for low-end devices. Meta also
| subsidizes internet for WhatsApp in developing countries, so they
| don't have to only use the service on wifi.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| A different theory:
|
| The ultimate super app is the browser.
|
| The browser is dominant in the west, because we started using the
| internet with desktop computers, where a website was the ultimate
| way to reach people.
|
| When mobile started, everyone had to have an app. Surfing the web
| on mobile at the beginning didn't work that well. At the same
| time installing apps was a lot easier then on desktop.
|
| In the west, the app model matches the website model. Most
| popular apps started as websites, later made an app - facebook,
| youtube ...
|
| In emerging markets, they "skipped" the desktop, started with a
| smartphone.
|
| Installing apps is still more of a hassle then visiting websites,
| so a super app makes more sense then a super website.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| Agreed, but the browser never got the identity/contacts bit
| down. So what would be a relatively simple social app when you
| can rely on your existing social graph becomes much more
| complicated and loses out on network effects when it has to be
| its own completely independent site.
|
| Now, I'm not saying we should have this as a centralized app
| either. The closest and most interesting thing I've seen along
| these lines in a decentralized approach is
| https://spritely.institute/
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Maybe email could be integrated into the browser better.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| I agree with this theory somewhat. I also think the browser had
| the runway to become the ultimate open mobile super app, but
| dropped the ball. For reasons we may never figure out, the
| browser never evolved beyond its initial incarnation. A mobile
| browser today is mostly just tabs that view shrunk down web
| pages. I am still waiting for a true mobile first web
| experience. This might even require a new kind of web page
| format.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| I'm waiting for a web first mobile experience. I don't think
| web pages are the problem, mobile operating systems are. They
| should, fundamentally, just be browsers. The desktop has
| space enough for two layers of operating systems - "the"
| operating system, and the browser. But on mobile that's too
| confusing.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| Agreed. Data privacy and security is so important,
| especially on mobile since it's our wallet, camera, etc
| that we need the system to help with permissions, data
| management etc. It is redundant to have a browser layer AND
| an operating system layer manage these separately.
| dahdum wrote:
| > For reasons we may never figure out, the browser never
| evolved beyond its initial incarnation.
|
| The reason is simple, the 30% app store profits. Very low
| incentives for either of the 2 major players to improve
| things, and tens of billions of reasons yearly to slow things
| down.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| You can't blame the app stores or the mobile platforms. The
| truth is that _anyone_ could re-imagine a web browser and
| build something brand new and become successful
| distributing through the store for free.
| amelius wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| Still, what happened to FirefoxOS?
| rakoo wrote:
| It was forked into KaiOS, targeting feature phones and
| allowing devs to use web technologies for building apps.
| pca006132 wrote:
| But super app is more problematic than browser: They are closed
| gardens, you don't have any alternative.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| I agree with this problem but it doesn't refute the point
| being made. This is just an unfortunate consequence of how
| history has played out. There is no rule or guiding north
| star in the open market to "limit closed gardens". This is
| just a philosophy that a minority of people hold.
| immigrantheart wrote:
| Seems the usual HN crowds that are worried of centralization and
| monopoly praising these super apps. What am I missing?
| ak217 wrote:
| This article is trying to explain the rise of super-apps in China
| through the lens of user experience, but I think a more likely
| explanation is government regulation and platform moderation. In
| Western markets, Apple and Google use app moderation to forbid
| apps from doing too many different things at once, so as to
| preserve their platform advantage. Also, in Western markets,
| companies that develop apps are wary of developing super-apps
| because they anticipate exponentially more attention from
| regulators the more things their app does. In China, Apple was
| worried they'd be shut out of the market so they ceded some
| control over the platform by allowing super-apps; Google never
| had much control over their platform; and regulators are more
| concerned with protectionism than preventing abuse.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| Even in India all the super apps failed spectacularly.
| pcl wrote:
| > In Western markets, Apple and Google use app moderation to
| forbid apps from doing too many different things at once, so as
| to preserve their platform advantage.
|
| I've never heard about this before. Is this an official policy
| of either company? Do you have any citations to share for more
| reading?
| digitaLandscape wrote:
| revolvingocelot wrote:
| Er, do you think that Apple and Google are going to come out
| and say "half of the point of our respective app stores is to
| be able to strike down app-based competitors and reave 30% of
| their take"? It may not have even been Apple and Google's
| _intent_ to have app stores serve thusly, but it 's clear
| that that's what's happening.
|
| >Do you have any citations to share for more reading?
|
| I suggest the works of Stafford Beer, a cyberneticist known
| for the quote "the purpose of a system is what it does".
| 7speter wrote:
| I imagine theey also don't want to have to deal with these
| super apps eating up significant resources on their
| devices, and even ultimately, having to make their devices
| serviceable (both technically and ideologically ) to one or
| a few pf these super apps.
| noahmasur wrote:
| I've mostly seen this for game platforms on iOS:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/05/valve-apple-wont-
| let-...
|
| I think it's waffled back and forth on game streaming:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21357771/apple-cloud-
| gamin...
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/9/22826297/microsoft-
| xbox-x...
|
| Netflix also has to offer their games as separate packages:
|
| https://www.whathifi.com/news/netflix-games-will-
| reportedly-...
| xcambar wrote:
| I've missed a career opportunity to lead a super app for the
| Indian market. I truly regret it of course but I'm thankful at
| least for the truly enlightening conversations I've had the luck
| to have, with people having large scale jobsian visions and the
| means to achieve them.
|
| It reinforced my appreciation for hiring processes, when one can
| be lucky enough to meet true leaders with exceptional visions.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Are super apps actually working in the Indian market? I know
| Paytm has tried so hard but its not really gained much traction
| outside of payments.
| mannymanman wrote:
| Why did you not take that offer?
| Bubble_Pop_22 wrote:
| China presence is significant in emerging markets
| Dig1t wrote:
| My question is, how do super apps actually work? On iOS, does the
| WeChat app actually download an iOS app bundle and execute it? Or
| does it do something like a browser and execute some kind of
| markup + interpreted language like JavaScript?
|
| If it's the former, I thought Apple banned apps in their App
| Store from doing that. Seems like maybe they made an exception
| for WeChat..? If so does that exception only exist within China
| or also in the US?
| pxeger1 wrote:
| Apple don't ban web browsers from the App Store either, so I
| guess their ban is not very strict.
| ryan-c wrote:
| > Apple don't ban web browsers from the App Store
|
| They do, in fact, ban web browsers other than Safari.
|
| I know what you're going to say - "Chrome is available for
| iOS". It's just Safari with a different UI. All the parsing,
| rendering and javascript runtime code is Safari.
| ajkjk wrote:
| It's a complete fucking pain, too.
| alwillis wrote:
| Just to be clear, because apps aren't allowed to run
| untrusted code (like random JavaScript in a JIT) via
| interpreter or compiler, any app that shows web content has
| to use WebKit-based APIs.
|
| And while WebKit is the HTML and JavaScript engine that
| Safari uses, browsers on iOS are quite different than
| Safari.
|
| I often use Brave because I like the UI and it blocks
| trackers etc. out of the box and certainly has features and
| UX that's different than Safari's.
|
| In my day to day usage, it makes zero difference that
| Safari and Brave use the same rendering engine on iOS.
| slaw wrote:
| I use Brave on iOS too, but it is inferior to real
| Firefox + uBlock Origin on Android.
| chazeon wrote:
| It's the second case, markup + JS.
| neither_color wrote:
| WeChat mini apps are javascript model/controller with a markup
| view https://github.com/apelegri/wechat-mini-program-wiki Think
| angular & Vue instead of react. Each page has a js, json,
| stylesheet and xml.
|
| You can technically hack one together but there's an annoying
| process of getting verified before you can use the IDE and test
| something on a phone. You also can't really publish anything
| and see how it goes without a serious plan and a Chinese
| national ID. There's a small scene of foreigners contributing
| to wechat apps and even starting some but ultimately control of
| the app is through a national.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| The joke ofc is that browsers are the original super-app,
| just more poorly monetized (I guess thank pmarca for not
| being _that_ good atexecution)
| nomay wrote:
| The Android Wechat app came bundled with a years-old fork of
| webview, coz the Android scene is a total mess, various vendors
| not only never update their system apps, but actually
| substitute it with their custom versions, this made it unusable
| and a "Chinese Webview" necessary, so wechat got one, all of
| Tencent's services use it plus plenty of third party apps,
| since almost every Android 5+ phone has the latest WeChat and
| their WebView fork.
|
| So this situation almost made their platform mentality an
| inevitabily, now they only need to define a set of principles
| for then to be a mobile OS.
|
| I'd say their applet thing can do 99% of the things a
| standalone app could, but the development speed , reach and
| functionality you can get is unmatched, best of all, it's the
| one true unified cross platform OS: on Android, iOS and
| Windows, but Chinese market only.
|
| So it's not a super app, it's a mobile OS.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Siri/Alexa are super-apps but with literally zero discoverability
| of features in their UX.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| Siri is just an alternative front end to your phone's touch-
| based UI. So is iOS also a super app?
| bee_rider wrote:
| Xorg, the original super-app.
| oriolid wrote:
| Or super apps are just a second launcher on top of the iOS or
| Android launcher, but the app selection is controlled by the
| super app's maintainer, not Apple or Google.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Siri is not, almost every request I give it results in a google
| search.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| I worked on two super apps for a good part of the last decade;
| one in India and one in South East Asia so here's my take based
| on those experience.
|
| As the article points out, most of the are trying to apply the
| playbook of WeChat. IMO it succeeded because they built an
| enormous user base which has a terrific daily engagement. Once
| daily engagement is cracked it becomes not all that hard (but not
| trivial) to add more use cases. P2P payments, file sharing, and
| you name it.
|
| However, in India and SEA the companies tried to go the other
| way. To take Indian example, most of the fintechs in their quest
| to increase engagement began adding chat. However, by then people
| had adopted to WA so it miserably failed. But they still kept at
| it and added more fintech related use cases; to take PayTM as an
| example one could do just about anything around payments with
| that. Insurance, toll payments, utility payment, pay to merchant,
| pay off EMIs, investments and what not. So they did achieve
| decent daily engagement.
|
| Grab has been trying to do the same. Going from Taxi app to a
| generic payments app. It's all about engagement.
|
| It's an enormous investment though. Not only about rolling out
| features but also to build two sided market places (example;
| merchant payment requires onboarding merchants too), onboarding
| utilities etc., However the profit from them are minuscule
| despite good utilisation because the recipient of the payment
| (like merchant, or utility providers) isn't going to give away
| their share of money.
|
| So, in the end all the fintechs resort to lending which is the
| biggest chunk of profit generator. It's a shame that the article
| doesn't mention it.
| seydor wrote:
| because other apps are too complicated , too greedy, full of
| popups, and other 'cool things' that techies consider de rigueur
| these days. Command line interfaces are always the best
| 3qz wrote:
| > Every aspect of a typical Chinese person's life, not just
| online but also off is conducted through [this] single app Every
| aspect of a typical Chinese person's life, not just online but
| also off is conducted through [this] single app
|
| What happens to people that get banned from WeChat?
| nomay wrote:
| You are shut out, and with the latest CCP censorship measures
| you are forbidden to creat accounts "web-wide".
|
| So I guess you should just keep your mouth shut other than
| harmonious online activities to avoid that doomsday situation,
| like me, I never use WeChat or Weibo to do anything other than
| keeping in basic touch, since you don't know which mundane word
| would become sensitive, trigger the censors and get you banned,
| there's no appeal.
| jon-wood wrote:
| I suspect life gets very difficult. When visiting a supplier in
| China a few years ago I tried to buy a coffee from the place
| downstairs and eventually had to get someone from the supplier
| to do so because they had no method of ordering and paying
| other than a WeChat app, and as someone without a Chinese bank
| account I was unable to pay for anything via WeChat.
| yep31 wrote:
| What happens to web developers that get banned from the
| internet?
| user_named wrote:
| Long article that doesn't provide the answer to its own title,
| but a lot of nonsense.
|
| Wechat is not a super app, it is a browser.
|
| It is popular because China is mobile first, you search within
| wechat instead of in a browser because the web is not mobile
| first but apps are.
| helloworld97 wrote:
| wodenokoto wrote:
| That's like saying the Apple App Store is a browser.
| helloworld97 wrote:
| idle_zealot wrote:
| It's more like saying that iOS is a browser. But that's
| precisely backwards. iOS is an operating system. Browsers are
| also basically operating systems. Superapps also behave like
| operating systems. This is probably where the "superapp is
| like a browser" sentiment comes from.
| lelandfe wrote:
| > Wechat is not a super app, it is a browser.
|
| ...and a payment service, and a search app, and a messaging
| app, and a social media service, and a video calling platform,
| and a VOIP calling service, and a video sharing platform
| [deleted]
| anubiskhan wrote:
| All things I can do in my browser
| chazeon wrote:
| Except that right now simplified Chinese contents are dying
| on the open web due to the walled gardens these super apps
| built. There are also payment and some government services
| now must be done in these super apps in China.
| ElCheapo wrote:
| Now go and see how many APIs Google Chrome has
| lelandfe wrote:
| All of those things I named are built by WeChat and live in
| the app, first-party: WeChat Pay, WeChat Moments, WeChat
| Channels, WeChat Out, etc.
|
| "You can technically visit any site you want" is really not
| an apt rebuttal to an app that contains a multitude of
| first-party features.
| ElCheapo wrote:
| WeChat is controlled by the government. They don't need
| an open ecosystem: if the government mandates an app then
| everyone will use that app. It's completely unnecessary
| to implement some kind of public facing API to offer the
| functionalities to supposed third parties. There are
| none.
| lelandfe wrote:
| It is an "open ecosystem" if I am understanding your
| meaning correctly. You can make your own ("mini")
| programs for WeChat. I presumed that's where the original
| "it is a browser" comment stemmed from.
|
| I was trying to point out that the super-app label stems
| from the bevy of _first-party features_ WeChat has built
| in. There aren 't real analogs to that in the western
| world (Facebook would like to be one of them).
|
| That the government has their hands on their scale is
| orthogonal to this discussion.
| ElCheapo wrote:
| Google as a whole (especially in America) has a slew of
| services entirely comparable to WeChat. The problem is
| not many people use them.
|
| They have phone and internet plans, they have mobile and
| desktop OSs, they have self-driving taxis, they have
| email, they have IM, they (had) a social network, they
| have a payment system, they have cloud storage and
| computing, they even have actual phones and computers.
| Sure, they miss a couple of things like a marketplace,
| but if US citizens somehow were forced to use all-Google
| devices they would definitely do everything with Google
| Search, Google Duo, GMail and Google Pay just like the
| Chinese do everything via WeChat. In that case obviously
| Google would integrate all their services even tighter by
| allowing almost everything to be done through their IM or
| email, but right now they are much more similar to WeChat
| than you might think
| lelandfe wrote:
| > Google as a whole... has a slew of services entirely
| comparable to WeChat
|
| > they miss a couple of things like a marketplace
|
| Really all there is to it. Google offers disparate
| services instead of bundling and lacks essential parts of
| WeChat (e.g. commerce, social media).
|
| The comparison comes up short.
| refurb wrote:
| I hate super apps. It made me appreciate the simple and clean UX
| of apps developed in the US and Europe.
|
| Nothing worse than opening up Shoppe or Grab and immediately
| being slammed with 3 dozen icons that you need to scroll through.
|
| Hell, even my banking app looked like that. Select "other
| requests" and I get to scroll through about 40 different icons
| for stuff to do. And they just offer banking.
|
| Apps like Grab offer banking, transport, food, digital wallet,
| etc.
|
| Seems super clunky to me, but what I've been told is the goal is
| for that app to do "everything" so you never need a different
| app.
| lawgimenez wrote:
| Our family uses Grab app a lot and yes the dashboard is a mess.
| At one point Grab has games in it too.
| hestefisk wrote:
| Grab also has / had a built-in messaging functionality. The
| UI is a sad mess.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| The other problem with super apps, at least where I am now, is
| a quarter of the functions don't work, or work but break the
| viewport, or work but put the app into an unusable state until
| you hard reload it.
|
| The more functions there are, the more testing that needs to
| happen and doesn't... "in emerging markets".
| hestefisk wrote:
| This is exactly what the DBS app is like as well.
| mathverse wrote:
| Superapps are a deadend if you dont have a huge population like
| China that is comfortable with centralization.
| seydor wrote:
| because there are fewer monopolies in the western internet?
| mathverse wrote:
| Simply because westerners dont really want to trust one
| single corporation.
| seydor wrote:
| They don't? Apple and google exist
| mathverse wrote:
| That's nowhere near what WeChat is for chinese people.
|
| Both Google and Apple can be totally ignored but you need
| WeChat for everyday life in China.
| seydor wrote:
| that s not what we re talking about though. There is no
| indication that people are not using Applepay and
| GooglePay because of trust concerns, it's because it is
| not available widely
| foxhop wrote:
| super app: "covid zero", red/green QR code app controls
| human movement in China.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| yeah we prefer the illusion of 2-3 conglomerates
| lukasb wrote:
| Great article. Was reading through thinking "okay so why aren't
| super apps popular in the west?" and lo and behold, they tackle
| that question brilliantly.
| intrasight wrote:
| "super app": a browser within an "app" that knows who you are and
| knows how to move your money around.
| miki123211 wrote:
| The truth is, traditional, western mobile apps really suck, and
| create a lot of friction. Some of that friction only exists to
| maintain Apple's and Google's competitive advantages (think web
| browsers being overly limited), but a large part of it exists
| because we choose privacy over user convenience.
|
| As I understand it, weChat mini apps have the ability to reliably
| identify their users and keep their data across multiple devices,
| with no accounts and no user interaction. Imagine opening an app
| for recipes, adding a recipe and knowing that it's always going
| to be there, no matter the device, with no signing up, no
| figuring out a password, no complicated login screens, nothing.
| You open an app and it just works.
|
| Same thing extends to payments, Apple Pay and Google Pay aren't
| terribly popular with users as they require extra steps to set
| up, and in app purchases have ridiculous fees and can't be used
| for goods sold outside the app.
|
| The only western system that ever came close was probably
| Minitel[1], which was just too outdated technologically to
| survive the age of the modern internet. iCloud would also be a
| competitor if it worked cross platform.
|
| [1] https://afridigest.com/super-apps-in-emerging-markets/
| baby wrote:
| > weChat mini apps
|
| I always said that Facebook can innovate in different ways:
|
| 1. use their already existing social graph to produce OTHER
| apps that are useful
|
| 2. use their tool with a new social graph
|
| Number 2 has been done once I believe. It's called workplace.
| Number 1 is what Wechat is doing on steroids, and Facebook has
| done almost none of that. It's insane that they're not taking
| advantage of this and are just adding noise to the useful tool
| that facebook used to be.
| [deleted]
| greenonions wrote:
| You're forgetting that Facebook can see the future and
| everyone is wearing helmets and gloves and living in a
| digital world that looks like a mobile game from 2008.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Facebook owns WhatsApp. It baffles me why they haven't
| turned that into Western WeChat yet.
| jacooper wrote:
| They are doing it, just slowly and not worldwide yet.
|
| Want to see peak WhatsApp? Check out the version of
| WhatsApp in India.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| I've built startups both in the US and in an "emerging market",
| so I'll offer some of my own answers here.
|
| 1. Consumers are less tech-savvy, so having a single app as a
| starting point makes everything far easier than having to install
| many apps.
|
| 2. Brand is much more valuable. In emerging markets, with
| (overall) less regulation (and self-regulation) of markets, trust
| and brand carries a LOT of weight. If I trust company X with my
| payments, I'm also more likely to trust them with my
| transportation, my food delivery, etc (than having to
| verify/trust a new party). Having a trusted brand makes it very
| easy to expand into new verticals.
|
| 3. Regulatory clout. Once you have the scale (or political
| connections) to navigate regulation in one vertical, it's much
| easier to apply that to new verticals. You might "know the right
| people", know how to navigate the bureaucracy better... or in
| some cases, it's just easier for the government to trust you with
| a license than someone who's unknown to them.
|
| 4. Talent is more sparse, so clustering it in one place tends to
| make things more efficient.
|
| 5. Funding might be hard to come by, but existing companies
| either already have the cash or have connections to investors.
|
| Overall, these things in combination just make it a lot easier
| for an existing company to launch a new vertical than for an
| upstart to do so. With time and as markets evolve, you'd probably
| expect more specialization to occur, but by then the super apps
| may already be entrenched enough to defend themselves.
|
| For similar reasons, family-owned conglomerates tend to be very
| successful in emerging markets and span across a variety of
| unrelated industries. You just bought a place in a housing
| development built by a company owned by wealthy family X, then
| you go to the supermarket to buy some milk but you're not sure
| which brand to trust... Then you see the carton manufactured by
| another company from family X.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| > span across a variety of unrelated industries
|
| Lippo group[1] is one such conglomerate in Indonesia. During my
| stint at a company of SEA we partnered with one of their
| subsidiaries, Ovo. At that time I wasn't aware of Ovo's parent
| company and the extent of their reach. A visiting exec said
| that Lippo group has enough businesses to cater to a person
| from birth to death. Later I found out he wasn't joking, they
| own hospitals as well as graveyard and everything in between.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lippo_Group
| nilsbunger wrote:
| Ooh, I like the analogy to family-owned conglomerates. Also not
| something you see a lot of in the US because of the structure
| of US finance.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| Awesome insights, thanks for sharing
| brightball wrote:
| In the US the "super app" was probably AOL.
| signal11 wrote:
| Facebook is effectively a "super app" already.
|
| * Friends' posts
|
| * News
|
| * Pages (manage your business and engage with customers)
|
| * Discussion
|
| * Marketplace -- huge for some people
|
| * Groups -- huge for some people
|
| * Probably other functionality I've no idea about
|
| (Of course, I happen to think it does a terrible job of its
| original purpose, which is friends' posts, but clearly lots
| of users use it anyway...)
| tschwimmer wrote:
| It's not even close to these super apps outside the states.
| You can renew your drivers license in WeChat.
| p_l wrote:
| IIRC You can sue someone in civil court, get through the
| whole process, get a sentence and get paid compensation
| when you win, all in WeChat
| GordonS wrote:
| And perhaps Compuserve for the UK and Europe. Ah, makes me
| feel nostalgic, I loved Compuserve!
| majormajor wrote:
| I think the constant discussion and investor focus around stuff
| like "when will we get a super app in the US" is ignoring a lot
| of these factors that I think are pretty path-dependent. Once
| you build up the app/services ecosystem one way or another,
| there's a ton of inertia to overcome vs building this up from
| scratch in a new market.
| meltyness wrote:
| It'll be fine as long as they write and maintain perfectly secure
| software and infrastructure, and stay competitively up to date
| and performant.
| ryandrake wrote:
| The article (and the embedded NYT video) seem to imply that
| WeChat is not just a dominant app, but is pretty much the only
| way to do things in China. For example the quote, "try and pay
| with cash for lunch, and you'll look like a luddite."
|
| So, what if you cannot use WeChat? Or if you're banned by their
| AI (which happens all the time with western apps)? Or if you
| simply choose not to? There must be other ways to book rides,
| hire services, pay people, chat, E-mail, and so on.. I (in the
| West) opt out of using Facebook+all FB properties, Twitter,
| Google, and so on, and I still have the full ability to live as a
| normal person. Surely China has cash and the ability to book
| things over the phone...?
| nomay wrote:
| COVID measures made WeChat a must have for anyone except
| toddlers, since you need to show your green COVID qr code to
| enter public spaces, and almost any Chinese had done one if not
| daily obligatory mass testing, in which various WeChat applets
| are required.
|
| You can live perfectly fine without it before, buy you simply
| can't legally live in China without a working, updated and
| ready-to-open WeChat now, since last year.
|
| The CCP also did their whole national census on a WeChat
| applet, it's the defacto governing tool.
| beorno wrote:
| My take after 20+ years in China living with WeChat and Alipay:
|
| 1) Green field: no or few incumbents or legacy platforms or
| regulatory capture to deal with - infrastructure in the West is
| antiquated and fossilized in comparison.
|
| 2) Open to change: People and businesses are living in a world
| that's extremely cut-throat and dynamic, and so they expect
| change, and are willing to try new things - the West is more
| conservative in comparison (e.g., the proliferation of QR code
| use cases seamlessly bridging offline/online that never took off
| in the West except when force by CVOID).
|
| 3) Free pass from platforms: Due to "be nice to China" Apple has
| turn a blind eye towards WeChat and Alipay running an app store
| inside of an app (which has always been against their
| regulations, and which MANY companies would like to do).
|
| 4) Hard work and (used to be) cheaper labor: 996 super-hard work
| ethic means they churn out features and blitz scale really well -
| they're just more aggressive.
|
| 5) In touch with the offline world: Companies in China have to
| deal with the reality of an extreme variety of users, from cities
| to countryside, from young to old, from rich to poor. They often
| build out big sales and support orgs of people walking around
| from store to store, across the country, whereas I think many
| startups in the West (often due to cost reasons) tend to do
| almost everything online.
|
| And increasingly:
|
| 6) Government support. WeChat is pretty much the ERP system of
| China today. You can do everything through/on it. In some ways
| it's a utility. I guess every country could benefit enormously in
| terms of control and efficiency by having an platform that
| provides authentication, authorization, and payments as a base
| layer for all other apps. The government puts people / teams /
| divisions inside of organizations to ensure things are "running
| smoothly", but this works best if they have a few big companies
| to deal with - not a myriad of small startups. WeChat and Alipay
| are becoming more and more nationalized, and are already "too big
| to fail".
|
| I miss not having WeChat in the West, though I'd of course wish
| it was done in a less 1984-ish way. Life has ballooned in
| complexity, and bureaucracy has gotten out of hand in the West...
| We need a radical streamlining in order to regain back our
| productivity (and not waste time filling out checks, waiting in
| line, calling/faxing, filling out forms, etc). Super apps, if
| done well like in WeChat's case, can offer that .
|
| (I grew up in Europe, spent 20 years in China, and now living in
| North America.)
| actionablefiber wrote:
| Does 996 yield better results than typical 9-5 work? I can't
| help but think that at that level of time investment,
| particularly for knowledge work, you are getting negative
| marginal benefits on time spent at work.
| Macha wrote:
| The 4-day workday movement is testing the opposite
| hypothesis, and I've heard of a few tech companies testing
| the waters with e.g. time limited half day fridays (marketed
| as a post-covid recovery or summer perk). The questions are
| what they took from the results and whether they'd be willing
| to be seen to take risks with their biggest cost when the
| expectation is for a recession.
| jhatemyjob wrote:
| It's just (3). Apple doesn't allow them outside of China, so
| they only work in China. That's all there is to it.
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