Global Messaging Trends: WeChat, Facebook, Bots, and Apps

Grata.co April 2016Chat Beijing | Global Messaging Trends
Global
Messaging
Trends
Distractions,
hype, and what
really matters
Andrew Schorr
Founder @ Grata.co
Image Credit: Kathleen Wilson/Baltimore Academy of Illustration

Peak Messaging Hype
©REUTERS

We recently hit
Facebook F8 Developer Conference 12 April 2016

Suddenly
texting a
weather cat is
better than
opening a
weather app

vs.
Slack Tacobot
Tacobell.com
…and typing pico de gallo is
faster than a screen tap

Evidence everywhere of a hype cycle

It lasted about 10 days…

Meanwhile, in China…
1
Voice message
to a WeChat
Ofﬁcial Account
Are there any
tickets on a
sleeper train from
Beijing to
Shanghai this
Sunday?
2 Tap your itinerary from instant response
3
Select ticket
type and book
Mobvoi’s Chumen
Wenwen WeChat
account launched in
2013. Google
invested US$60M in
Mobvoi in October
2015

60 billion
messages/day
3x peak volume of SMS
+
This isn’t to say messaging
isn’t a big deal.

Ofﬁcial Accounts
Aug 2012
Wallet
Aug 2013
P2P Payments
Jun 2014
Open Platform
Oct 2013
Responding to WeChat
WeChat 1.0
Jan 2011
Push-to-talk
May 2011
Moments
Apr 2012
Push-to-talk
Aug 2013
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
People Nearby
Aug 2011
Ofﬂine Payments
Sep 2014
Rejects $3B from FB
Nov 2013
WeChat is “role model”
Sep 2013
Google searches for “WeChat” peak in US
Dec 2013
FB buys for $22B
Feb 2014
FB Requires Download
Apr 2014
WeChat invests $50M
Aug 2015
P2P Payments
Jun 2015
Messenger 1.0
Aug 2011
Flagship product at F8
Mar 2015
“Wants to be WeChat of West”
November 2014
Alibaba invests $200M
Mar 2015
Open Platform
Apr 2016
Spring Festival Red Packets
Feb 2014

Regional + User Fragmentation
Closed Markets
The APac story
FB FTW
The rest of the world
Generational Trends
FB’s biggest threat
How many winners?
Image Credit: Dave Simmons

Local Player vs. FB in Asia Paciﬁc
(2015Q1)
Retrieved from https://medium.com/art-marketing/the-hidden-homescreen-70c794ff9ada#.91l3z7wzl
Basically
closed
markets

FB’s Demographic Threat?
(2015 Spring)
Retrieved from http://simplymeasured.com/blog/9-things-social-media-marketers-need-to-know-from-mary-meekers-2015-internet-trends-report

Snapchat vs Facebook with <34yo
(2015 Oct)
Retrieved from http://www.vertoanalytics.com/2015/10/the-demographics-of-social-media-properties-looking-beyond-downloads/

Payments
Image Credit: Niki Koch hauntedatheart.tumblr.com
Fundamental to Messaging as
a Platform
FB Payments?
Breakout moment will be when
Messenger supports online +
ofﬂine payments
WeChat’s beachhead abroad?
Driving merchant adoption,
but unlikely to impact app
downloads

WeChat’s Payment Success
Image Credit: Melissa Capaletti
High-frequency app
Pay in-app, online, & ofﬂine
300M+ of 700M MAU have
linked a payment account
Clever forcing functions
Red Packet sharing; payment
account required to join
groups chats of 100+ people

Facebook on Payments
“We don’t view ourselves as a payments
business, that’s not the type of company
that we are. We’ll partner with everyone
who does payments.”
http://venturebeat.com/2016/03/29/facebook-messenger-is-reportedly-taking-on-apple-pay-and-samsung-pay/
This quote can be misleading. Messenger will
soon be handling a huge volume of payments.
Mark Zuckerberg, January 2016

Payments in US
Source: McKinsey Retrieved from Jan 2016 Tweet https://twitter.com/andreatdell/status/684496659997454336

Monetization
Image Credit: Alex Kazanas alexkazanas.com
FB approaches this
differently than WeChat
Advertising
Sponsored Messages
User Data
Transactional

Average Revenue per User (2014)
Source: Activate.com Note: These are estimates, don’t put too much faith in them.
WeChat $7.00
KakaoTalk $4.24
LINE $3.16
WhatsApp $0.06
Viber $0.01
Messenger $0.00

Business Accounts
Image Credit: Meredith Burke mdith.com
WeChat dominated early,
wrote the rules
WhatsApp defacto Ofﬁcial
Accounts
FB has 50M businesses
Best position is in the
payment ﬂow

Messaging as App Platforms
Broken app discovery
Context switching
Social graph
Over-hyped chat UI
Image Credit: Marlena Murtagh

50,000 Apps Published per Month
Retrieved
from
h2ps://medium.com/art-‐marke=ng/the-‐hidden-‐homescreen-‐70c794ﬀ9ada#.91l3z7wzl

Yet, No one is Downloading Apps
Retrieved
from
h2ps://medium.com/art-‐marke=ng/the-‐hidden-‐homescreen-‐70c794ﬀ9ada#.91l3z7wzl

6 of the Top 10 Most Used Apps
Retrieved from https://medium.com/intercom-inside/the-end-of-app-stores-dd379e754033#.8mjiwgybv

20%+ of Top 50 Most Addictive Apps
Source: Survey Monkey Intelligence, February 2016, Retrieved from http://venturebeat.com/2016/04/23/the-50-most-addictive-mobile-apps/

Bots & AI
Finding the right use
cases
Multiple query search
Already have context
Background bots
“AI” isn’t there yet
Image Credit: Sarah Magida sarahmagidadesigns.com

We haven’t
ﬁgured
everything
out yet.

CNN bot
as your
annoying
friend
Image Credit: Hank Horkoff, Magnet

Tay tweets

What’s Coming
Image Credit: Sara Klementovic saraklem.com
Hybrid UIs
Distribution over App
Downloads
Rise of AI, Voice
OS vs. Messaging Apps
Google, Apple vs. Microsoft,
FB, et al

Essential Reading, Listening, & Watching
• “When One App Rules Them All: The Case of WeChat and Mobile in China” by Connie Chan 2015 Aug 06
http://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/
Widely viewed analysis that made a big impact in the West’s understanding of WeChat.
• “Bots and Beyond” a A16Z podcast with Connie Chan, Benedict Evans, and Chris Messina 2016 Apr 18
http://a16z.com/2016/04/18/bots-messaging-conversation-commerce
What are the good use cases for bots? Customer service for one. What are the ramifications for user, platform, and brand
in a messaging world?
• “How chatbots are going to redefine retail customer service” by Daphne Howland 2016 April 18
http://www.retaildive.com/news/how-chatbots-are-going-to-redefine-retail-customer-service/417458
Live agent customer service is still critical to most businesses, though chatbots can provide some value filtering at the
start.
• “When do bots beat apps? When context and convenience matter most” by Peter Rohas 2016 Apr 04
https://medium.com/chat-bots/when-do-bots-beat-apps-when-context-and-convenience-matter-
most-443c9191bb2b#.att7y88zx
If bots win, it won’t simply be because of their ease of use, but by the sheer usefulness of being embedded within the
context in which we are already working or conversing
• “Finding Jarvis: An Insider’s Look at the Future of Digital Messaging Agents” by Ivan Lee 2016 Mar 29
https://medium.com/swlh/finding-jarvis-an-insider-s-look-at-the-future-of-digital-messaging-
agents-7270782f687b#.i9zibvy44
Great discussion of the challenges and limitations facing Messaging as a platform.
• Facebook Messenger F8 Keynote with David Marcus 2016 Apr 12 [video 15m56s]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JbmAw1E-Wg
Messenger platform opens to public, wit.ai available for writing bots…
The illustrations in this PPT
First appeared in this AdWeek article” Why Every Marketer Should Be Keeping Up With the Evolution of Messaging Apps”
http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/why-every-marketers-should-be-keeping-evolution-messaging-apps-169998

Grata is the leading provider of enterprise
contact center software for WeChat.
grata_co info@grata.co grata_co

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