TechJhola: We Chat: All in one super app

China, the fast-growing economy and most populated country of the world. If you wanna know about how the internet will be in the future, China has become a guide to the world. For every others internet is internet, but for China internet is intranet. They have strong firewall to filter the foreign sites. So there is no Facebook, no YouTube, no google. Instead they have fulfilled the internet vacuum with Chinese big monster apps which have introduced the huge companies. So, for Google there’s Baidu, for YouTube there’s Youku, for twitter there’s Sina Weibo and the list goes on and on. Before, outside world hadn’t cared much about Chinese Internet but now all of the sudden they have developed some of the amazing features that the western apps are trying to copy them. The greatest example of this is WE CHAT that does every single function of number of western apps.

We Chat is actually a super app, performs number of works. It’s like Facebook, Skype and Uber, its more like amazon, Instagram, Venom and tinder. You can find every service you wish to to have in We Chat. You can book movie tickets from We Chat. You can book the flight tickets and moreover you can get the flight status notification from We Chat. You can book the taxi through We Chat and pay the bill through same app. It has the heat map that shows how crowed a place is, or popular tourists site, or your favourite shopping mall and a list of services goes on and on.

Furthermore, this super app provides text messaging, voice messaging, one to many broadcast messaging, video conferencing, video games, sharing photographs and videos, location sharing and many more. Another amazing feature is that, it can share the contacts with people nearby via Bluetooth and provides various contacting features to contact the desired person, who is connected to the app. The list of services goes on basically forever.

The app is available on Android, iPhone, BhackBerry, Windows Phone and Symbian phone. It is not that the list of features make the app so powerful, the reason is that it is all in one app. So how can you prove that We Chat is all in one app?

Hypothetically let us take an example, you are sitting at your home and you find your dog dirty. You open We Chat and click some buttons, and a man with Shampoo and big vacuum arrives since you have clicked the washing service from the app. In an hour, your dog gets cleaned. You take the photograph of your dog and post that in We Chat. Your friend being bored in the office opens We Chat, sees your photograph and order the same service. Her dog too gets cleaned and she pays the bill through We Chat like you had paid earlier to the man. You both chat through We Chat. She thanks you and you tell her about the new restaurant to go for lunch. You order the food in the restaurant through the app and pay for the food from your home instantly. Your friend takes a taxi, pays for the taxi through We Chat. You both haven’t left the app, neither the man with big vacuum who cleaned your dog have left the app. The man with big vacuum on the way to his home invest the money, he has got today into a project. You both arrive the restaurant, your friend upload the photo of the dish on We Chat and she transfers the money to you that you paid for the dish. Still Neither of you, nor the man with big vacuum, nor the restaurant have left the app.

At the restaurant, there is no money, there are no menus, there are no waiters and there is only We Chat. In China 700 Million people use this app for the variety of services.

Users who have provided bank account information may use the app to pay bills, order things and services, transfer money to other users of We Chat, and pay the bill in stores that have We Chat payment option.

*This article is written with reference to the video How China Is Changing Your Internet | The New York Times