china – Avery Segal 习安睿

September 12, 2019

Tweetstorm: How China is Cashing in on Group Chats

Based on my article with Connie Chan as can be seen here.

1/ New blog post after 6+ months of observing dozens of company-started group chats! @conniechan and I dive into how brands use group chats to facilitate deeper customer relationships and social commerce. Thread of observations from my time undercover: https://t.co/7MayZjypeN
— Avery Segal (@avesegal) September 7, 2019

But first, the chat groups this posts largely focuses on are not shopping-centric groups (ie Pinduoduo), but conversational group chats facilitated by businesses. These group chats thrive because they feel natural and not transactional.

Ctrip creates group chats for Chinese travelers to major world cities every week. They push products, like car rentals/tours and even spas, but also help travelers have fun to ensure repeat customers. It was fun waking up everyday to hear about adventures across the world!

They’re also nice because users can crowdsource literally anything! I saw people share pools to visit in Bali, photos of lines at Shanghai Disney, and restaurant reviews in Phuket. @ClaireLiStory told me about her mom crowdsourcing cherry blossom photo spots in Japan.

Group chats drive friendship because live conversations mimic real life. I saw tons of solo travelers planning meetups, trips, and nights out. Ctrip disbands the groups after every trip for privacy, but I know from my time in-groups that people make lasting friendships.

Even if the end result is not commerce, customer relationships build brand loyalty. One am, a user lost her bag in the airport. Ctrip support responded immediately with contact info, and fellow travelers helped her find it. That’s a lifelong customer/brand advocate.

Other examples: Supermonkey gym has no membership cards. They use group chats as a loyalty tool: instructors post class music/photos/nutrition tips, and users resell classes they can’t attend. When I attended a class recently, group members hung out IRL afterwards and went for bbq.

In Lingochamp, the group leader hosts a new activity every day in the group chat for students to practice with each other ie self-introductions, interviewing, or even reading Christmas poems. Every week the leader touts performance improvements while upselling premium classes.

That’s not to say only in China do businesses see the benefits of group chats: see Lambda School’s CEO @Austen’s tweet on what he uses group chats for:

Literally everything
— Austen Allred (@Austen) March 8, 2018

In sum, the point is not that group messaging is better than group posts, it just drives a different kind of behavior. And the C2C interactions in the chat groups can work for businesses by building trust and driving sales.

July 3, 2019July 3, 2019

Tweetstorm: Libra and WeChat Compared

1/ I’ve seen some talk of how Libra is Facebook’s ultimate “WeChat move”, so let’s dive into some similarities and differences between the two projects.
— Avery Segal (@avesegal) June 24, 2019

(But first…) please note that none of the following should be taken as investment advice. See http://a16z.com/disclosures for more info.

Similarity: WeChat and Libra both have the goal of payment accessibility. WeChat Pay spearheaded China’s transformation to a cashless digital society w/ 900M+ MAU, many underserved by traditional banks. Libra aims to bring price-stable money via crypto wallets to 2B+ people.

Ubiquitous mobile wallets is big for fintech and greater financial opportunity. While USD is relatively stable, other countries like Venezuela lack stable ways to preserve wealth. It also unlocks new business models, as seen in this post w/ @conniechan

Huge difference: currency/reach. WeChat Pay can be used in 49+ countries but the platform itself is limited to local fiat balances in China or Malaysia. By being a cryptocurrency not pegged to a single currency like RMB, Libra’s aim is to be used globally.

Huge difference: centralization. Libra will launch with 100 nodes (1 by Facebook). Developers and other ecosystem participants have less deplatforming risk than exists with WeChat (although it’s still more centralized than other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin).

Kevin Werbach’s take on the importance of blockchain-enabled trust: “The benefits from re-establishing the trust it has lost would dwarf what it could squeeze out of mining the data.”

8/ That being said, centralization is not all bad for adopting new tech! WeChat incentivized online-to-offline payment adoption with $150M+ in subsidies in 2018 (Alipay spent $300M+)! But it also means they control the ecosystem.

Difference: Open-source. Unlike WeChat (and other fiat-based monetary platforms), the code that powers it is completely available for anyone to improve. In the event people are deplatformed, they can fork the code and create their own Libra alternative.

Similarity: Lack of anonymity. Libra is pseudonymous like Bitcoin and can be audited by third-parties or law enforcement, in contrast to completely anonymous products like Monero or Zcash (with shielded transactions).

So is Libra actually about emulating WeChat? There are clear differences, but the shared vision, with the potential of giving crypto wallets to the masses, may only be imaginable thanks to WeChat’s success in China.

In response to the Libra news, Tencent Chairman Pony Ma wrote, “The technology is mature, it’s really not difficult. It only depends on whether regulators allow it.” Going global ≠ open financial system, but there’s a lot to learn from studying their respective approaches.

Polit-Sheer-Form

After the first couple of days in Taipei, I finally came to the realization that it was simply too hot to do a lot of outdoor activities. With this in mind, I planned two museums for my final day – the National Palace Museum and the Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art.

While no photography was allowed inside the National Palace Museum, I have to say it’s fantastic. As the Nationalists fled to Taiwan, they brought back as many priceless treasures as they could from the Forbidden City. They hold nearly 700,000 artifacts, although there’s only room for about 2{3a5a0fd47fd42b6497167aecc6170a94848f1ba936db07c4954344fcfff1d528} of them can be on display at any given time. They have free English tours at 11:00 AM and 3:00 PM – try to schedule your visit around these! I didn’t reserve a spot in advance, but there was plenty of space on the morning tour.

A side note: The two biggest treasures at the museum are the infamous Jadeite Cabbage and a stone that looks curiously like stewed pork. Both were incredibly lifelike and amazing to see, yet slightly amusing due to their food-like nature.

Following the National Palace Museum, I took a bus heading towards the Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art. Living art greeted me along the way.

Daily Pictures: Polit-Sheer-Form

The highlight of my museum visit was seeing an exhibition by the modernist artists Polit-Sheer-Form. This group, started in 2005, uses the idealized commune or collective way of life to capture the social changes happening in mainland China. One of their main goals is to ‘capture how the intimacy between people in a communist society is replaced by a sense of indifference by capitalism’.

One of their pieces was a library in which all off the shelves were filled with identical blue books. Depending on your optimism levels, the books were either all devoid of content or all full of the same content, blank space. Being in the room and looking through the books was almost spooky.

Last year using identical mops and buckets, they traveled to New York to see if they could clean up Time Square collectively.

While I don’t think their art is very picturesque, it was quite introspective on the changes occurring in Chinese society. In the west we (rightly) focus on the tens of millions who died as a result of the Great Leap Forward. We focus on the pitfalls of communism. However, there is certainly more to the story.

June 15, 2014April 23, 2019

Beijing: First Month Highlights

For the past month I’ve been living in Beijing. My hostel is in a hutong, the narrow alleyways of traditional Beijing. These have been now made increasingly busy (and potentially dangerous) with the popularization of cars, motorcycles, and all kinds of electric vehicles and carts. I spend most of my time taking language classes, learning to cook Chinese food, and exploring the city.

Last week I went on a tour of Maliandao tea market. This market practically takes up an entire street, but is centered on a massive 3 story wholesale tea shopping mall. It was an eye-opener to try so many different teas – from the lightest of green teas to the darkest of blacks. Each tea has a variety of health benefits, and traditionally has no sweeteners or milk added.

Good quality tea does not come cheap in China, as the entire process is done by hand. The tea was sold in a variety of forms – from loose leaf, bags, and blocks to the massive sculpture below.

One of my favorite spots has become Houhai, a popular restaurant/bar area located on a series of massive manmade lakes. I love standing alongside the water, watching the boats go by and waving at everyone inside.

On a completely random note, as I was heading home one night I discovered the bathroom at the subway line 10 had a full-fledged band playing. While it was slightly awkward to walk past them (and even more awkward to photograph), I have to admit that they were pretty good!

One night I attempted to watch a Beijing Guoan match. This is Beijing’s professional team in the Chinese Super League, and this year they are doing exceptionally well. I had read online that tickets should cost just about $7-14 from scalpers by the entrance. However, because they were playing the best team in the league for the number one position, tickets were over $60. Realizing that price was the cost of 40 lunches, I decided to head back to my hutong and watch the match on tv.

Nonetheless, I bought an absurd amount of Beijing Guoan apparel on the street. I might be their #1 fan in China who has never been to a match!

Finally, Trey Ratcliff of Stuck In Customs, a popular travel photography blog, came to Beijing and hosted a photo walk. He brought with him a remote controlled drone with a GoPro camera attached – which was loads of fun to watch him fly.

Trey invited his modeling friend, Ms. Leona Xu over during the photo walk. The photo Trey deemed most interesting would get to keep his camera, so everyone went nuts over photographing her.

I found the paparazzi-like crowd and blatantly sponsored baby formula to be quite amusing, while at the same time realized how aggravating it could be to be famous.

Other highlights include hiking on the Great Wall and general hutong life, which will have their own posts soon enough. Until then, thanks for reading and 再见!