If anything whatsapp is way more able to integrate we-chat like functionality and capture the “everything app” market is, then what Elmo wants to do with X-formerly-known-as-twitter.

Although I hope people just don’t want to have an everything app, and this fails horribly.

Better than Twitter, but still not great.

Anyone trying to reproduce WeChat in the west is insane. Nobody needs it. Nobody wants it. The conditions that allowed it to take off in China do not exist in the west.

The only company with a real chance of success is Apple, and their business model is a little more resistant to such corruption, at least for now.

The rabid duopolist that doesn’t even allow users to install whatever apps they want on their devices? The one that doesn’t even allow alternative browser engines? The one that outright refuses to use any and all open standards or to allow interoperability unless forced by governments? They might be one the worst companies in the world to do it.

Yeah. Apple basically has a captive market. Not to the extent of WeChat, but more than other western players.

The fact that Apple makes their money (mostly) on hardware sales, subscriptions, and their big-ass cut of App Store sales, instead of advertising like Google and Facebook, is why they are not likely to pull this crap in the near future. They don’t need to.

The online advertising ship is sinking, and Facebook is a rat desperately trying to find a way off.