Comment by Kunlun | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Kunlun | Hacker News Reader

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Very interesting angle. I am heavily using WeChat on a daily basis for all purpose: keep in touch with friends, read news, share content (audio, video, articles, pdf, etc.), call people worldwide (very good video stream in China), get alerts from servers, quickly reach distributed teams, pay in restaurants or bars, order train tickets, transfer money to friends, pay online, top up my mobile, etc.

It is by far the app that I use the most on my mobile. For a lot of my contacts, I do not have their phone numbers, email address or full name. I also believe I do not know anybody that do not have a WeChat account (from my landlord, the restaurant down my work to the legal contact of some of our contracts).

I will be leaving Asia soon, I am not sure what will replace this while settling in Europe. My phone could only use WeChat, I will not see big differences, save for emails. What other apps are so central for other markets? I merely use Whatsapp but it is far from having the same extend of functionalities nor such a complete experience.

While anecdotal, I've noticed that WhatsApp use and use cases are steadily increasing in my surroundings.

At first it was just an sms replacement. Then people started using the group chats for (mostly) silly stuff or family groups. Then the group chat function started to be used more functionally for work and, say, flatmate-type stuff coordination and communication.

I wouldn't be surprised that if (or perhaps when) WhatsApp adds more functionality, it will quickly be picked up by everyone around me. I'm mostly surprised what WhatsApp hasn't done this already, especially considering that Facebook already offers a number of functions that I'd love to see integrated (to a limited degree) into whatsapp's paradigm (event creation/planning, more advanced photo sharing, 'blogging').

Does anyone have any idea why WhatsApp isn't becoming more like WeChat?

Again I really appreciate the angle. Working in the technology sector I am wondering what is limiting Whatsapp to expand the features or if the are limiting the features on purpose. I would really like to understand the product design decision.

I listened to a talk by Jan Koum from WhatsApp right before the acquisition by Facebook. His key point was that WhatsApp success comes from the fact that they only do messaging (as an sms replacement) and keep the app simply. He was talking about a lot of functionality that he did not want to add (desktop client, video chat, games, anything commercial or e-commerce related) and said WhatsApp wants to keep the surface are of it's app and developer team as small as possible. I don't know how much that changed after the acquisition, though.

That strikes me as primarily an 'operational' success.

It seems entirely possible to me to integrate a significant amount of features into the 'stream of messages' paradigm without making it complicated enough to turn people away. And clearly the existence of WeChat shows that doing more than just messaging can be hugely successful.

It just happened to be smart for WhatsApp specifically, because of its circumstances and ability and whatnot, to focus on the core product.

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