There’s a new mobile chatting application “looking around” Thailand in a bid to attract users in a market already dominated by two major players.
Who’s behind this app? Well, they’re no slouches.
Chinese Internet giant Tencent – boasting some 800 million users – internationally re-branded heir Weixin chat application as WeChat in April, and last month began a promoting the app with Thailand as one of the key territories. Tencent actually already has its hands in the Thailand tech industry as a part owner of Sanook.com, the Kingdom’s preeminent web portal for news, discounts and almost anything else.
Tencent’s general manager of international business Poshu Yeung was in Bangkok recently and took some time to speak to a handful of Bangkok Techies, Twitterati and your humble Coconuts reporter.
So, first of all, what is WeChat? Yeung touts it as an all-in-one chatting application available in English, Indonesian, Portuguese, Thai, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, and Vietnamese languages, supported by iPhone, Android, Symbian and Windows mobile platforms.
Notable features to the first-time user, aside from standard chat capabilities, will be the “Shake,” “Drift Bottle,” and “Look Around” options. “Shake” is very similar to the Bump app already available for smart phones, but WeChat’s option allows you to shake your phone and be connected to the nearest person shaking their phone at random.
“Drift Bottle” is unique, but seemingly useless. It allows you to type a message and “cast a bottle” for anyone to pick up, and yes, you can pick up bottles too – but they’re likely to be in Chinese, for the time being.
As for “Look Around,” well, it allows you to “look around” and see the profiles of people using WeChat in your area. It tells you how far away they are, and if they have photos, you can peruse a selection of up to ten. What exactly is the purpose of this feature? We’ll get to that later.
Close to Home
In a mobile chitter-chatter market already dominated by the likes of WhatsApp and Line, one could be forgiven for asking Tencent, “What the hell are you thinking?”
Yeung had a quick reply: “localization.”
“In most countries, and I think in Thailand as well, it’s big enough to have three players.We’re not like WhatsApp, we’re not like Line… they just translate their product into Thai or different languages and roll it out. We don’t believe in that. We translate, but we actually focus on the localization part,” he said.“We have the architecture built such that we can start plugging in anytime – the development kit is ready for local content.”
“So local developers and Internet companies can actually start building plugins and plug into WeChat to start servicing local people with local content. We don’t see ourselves as another mobile instant messenger, it’s more like a platform. The communication product is just the basis right now, but we will continue to evolve, and to what exactly it’s going to be, I don’t know if we can answer that today.
“We are definitely willing to physically work with local developers. Facebook does not do that, but if [local developers] really want to do something and they knock on our door, we have engineers. We can actually sit down and work with these guys and try to develop something cool for local people,” he said.
He pointed out that several plugins have been developed since the product was launched in China in October last year. Push talk is an option that allows users to record voice messages and send them in the chat room, an option popular with Chinese users because “everybody knows that typing Chinese characters is hard already,” Yeung said.
WeChat also offers “Moments,” a photo album timeline where users can upload their photos and comment on them.
Another interesting possibility Yeung pointed out, in response to a barrage from the Thai tech core regarding the attractiveness of Line’s emoticons, was that due to its concept, WeChat could seek local artists to supply content for emoticon plugins. He was, however, unconvinced that emoticons could be the stuff of a successful app.
“People get very bored of these things… do you still play Angry Birds?” he quipped. Of course, given the audience, a couple of people quickly responded with an affirmative.
Why Thailand?
WeChat’s push into Thailand is based on promising feedback – the cornerstone of product development, Yeung said.
The company currently has no monetization plan, but simply hopes to develop a top-notch product by gleaning feedback from local users, he said.
“Thailand is a very exciting country because we have actually been working there, with Sanook. We like Thailand a lot – we like Southeast Asia a lot – partly because of the Asian culture, and proximity-wise, it’s very close to China,” he said.
WeChat is also undertaking similar, entirely social media-based, marketing campaigns in Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore, to name a few.
“So far, based on results, it seems that the product has been picked up pretty nicely in Thailand compared to other places,” he said.
In fact, depending on the day, you can often find WeChat on top of the App Store social network download charts in many Asian countries – even Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
Phone flirtation device?
“I want to emphasize, it’s not for flirting purposes,” Yeung said.
“But, if users find whatever ways they want to use the app, it’s ok. It’s just a platform. This is the feature and the intention is really for you to look around… and have a random opportunity to chat. There’s no theory behind ‘Look Around,’ it’s just for fun.”
The “Look Around” feature, as mentioned earlier, allows users to locate other users nearby.
Yeung stressed that the concept is just the first version of a location-based-service that will develop based on user feedback.
Were the techies, Twitterati and your humble reporter convinced? Not really. Yeung is right, users decide how to use it – it just so happens that most people are likely using it to chat up potential dates.
So, what’s the verdict? It’s safe to say the jury is still out on this one. Your Coconuts correspondent is not really attracted by the bells and whistles attached to WeChat, but nor is he particularly amused with any of the accoutrements offered by its competitors – he uses WhatsApp because his friends do, but if and when they switch to WeChat, he’ll surely follow.
