I-pad
 

The newer I-pads can also load we-chat. thus bigger pics !.

I use it on my computer because I hate typing on phones/tablets.

If any of you want a walk through of our official account, please feel free to either shoot me a PM or add my personal account to your wx: moondogsh. I finally have most of the angles covered.

Still don't get the Look Around feature, how does one size each other up for BD apart from uhm.. looks or the lack of it?

Do they have a cool picture, something interesting to say, and how are their moments?

What is BD?

It appears the link is down.

Some remotely "interesting" lines put up : "You'll Never Walk Alone", "I am not Casanova", "Life's not an option but fear is" and "looking for property agent".

Business development?

The Scan QR Code is useful for Japan and maybe Greater China. The Shake feature is uhmm...to find out who's shaking the cell phone at the same time with you, who could be 10,000 miles away. Moments is the FB-ish part of it which is what moondog is on about for the part on building business relationships?

Incidentally, just read that Alibaba is offering a competing product called
Laiwang that can do group chats with as many as 500 people.

Greetings, all.

I've finally wrapped my arms around "official accounts" and have the means to create sites for companies sans Chinese business licenses.

Check out howtochina, which I built entirely on my own. The only thing that's missing from it now is our form submission page. This is very important because, as of now, all form data is captured by a third party. I need one of my Chinese colleagues to devote 4 hours to this task tomorrow morning.

The bottom line is that if you are doing business in China, you must be on Wechat (access to 400 million customers).

Our prices start at Y1,500 and top out at Y6,000.

Off topic, howtochina is free for the next 30 days for 20 users; we are trying to optimize our system before turning up the volume. You will see us in the WSJ before Xmas.

Hi Moondog,

When I go to HowToChina.com I just get a box asking for an email address. Is there a different link? Thanks

We haven't turned on the website yet because we can't accommodate more than 20 users at this point in time (as you might imagine "how to x China?" is a pretty common search term). But, if you're in Wechat, you can simply search for it (no spaces). Alternatively, I can email you the QR code.

My biz partner (also in China) and I tried out the recent "video call" feature for the first time earlier this week during one of our evening calls because Skype was being annoying. I had noticed previously, but dismissed it as something that would surely be a let down. Furthermore, I simply don't like the idea of video calls (we're not living the Jetsons' Era yet, after all... as soon as I get my first robotic ayi, I'll succumb to the video thing).

Anyway, I took the plunge, and was simply blown away by the quality... AMAZING. Furthermore, I learned how to disable video within the first 3 seconds... so no problems there.

I would probably only use this function when on wifi because (based on the video/sound clarity) I'm guessing the data consumption is non-trivial.

Moondog, sorry about that. I totally forgot the time difference. In my defense I haven't slept in close to 42 hours, so I'm a little askew. Anyway, yes please do send me the QR code. Is there a Wechat tutorial? So far here's what I have on there: the Wechat team and you. Technology + me = kaploooie.

All through WeChat

http://androidcommunity.com/xiaomi-m...sale-20131129/

I really wished I could get a MI3, but it seems they'll keep their superior phones for themselves :(

So true, I just bought my first chinese smartphone on Chinese Amazon- It was 650 RMB, Its a Android Lenovo A850 , unlocked with two sim card slots, 5.5 " screen. Great dual language aps. Now i will try my ATT go phone chip & see if it works in Mexico.
- Thread Op- I just did install we-chat on this phone, so now have we-chat on both the Ipad 2 & the phone.

Partly due to this thread, I have downloaded wechat.

Must admit, this is pretty cool tool. I really like and dislike the mini posts people make of the stuff they are selling. This can be a great marketing tool for the future.

I don't understand the bottle feature but the shake feature is just a tad creepy.

Annoying part of this is the constant barrage of updates my pals seems to make and the drain on my battery.

Moondog, is that a picture of you in the train?

Also just on we-chat this month. yes the shake feature is creepy.

I like the Discover people nearby and the Album feature. Also some of the china conferences/Forums have a we-chat ID with the schedules and other reference notes.

I finally linked one of my CCs to Wechat today (I didn't think this was possible for non-China ID holders because whenever trying to register my Chinese cards, I was unable to get past the ID field, but I can now confirm that Visa/MC/Discover work fine). Now, I'll never need to ask a Chinese person to top up my phones again, and payment QR codes are going to start popping up everywhere (e.g. convenience stores, taxis, restaurants).

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 4.4.2; HTC One_M8 Build/KOT49H) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/35.0.1916.141 Mobile Safari/537.36)

Good to hear it works for you. Not sure about the non-Chenises ID bit though.

I never had that and was able to set up using Chase Corp Visa perfectly.

Er, top up phones? Didn't you use taobao for that?

We still top up our cell phones via taobao from Japan, no need for a credit card and you get a small discount.

I've been asking colleagues to top up for me for about 8 months. They used to use taobao but made the switch to wx earlier this month. The process is really fast!

Today, Tencent relaxed its restrictions wrt foreign company Wechat accounts:

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/cgi-bin/ann...=11&lang=zh_CN

This is good news for many of you -- who want to sell in China without having a Chinese entity.

We Chat is a great way to advertise your products or services. For now, however, the best and probably only smart bet for selling directly to China without having an entity here is to open a TMall Global account. Just ask Costco:).

Your customers (past, present, future) don't browse Tmall unless you send them there. All of them are on Wechat.

Which is why it's great to use for advertising. Unfortunately, not too many buy things via we chat yet. Hopefully that will change but for now TMall is where things get bought. It's just a shame that Tencent and Alibaba don't allow click thru links to each other's platforms.

Right now both are necessary for a strong e commerce presence on the mainland.

This 红包 thing has blown my mind. Y2000 received from people I have never met in person!

Can you explain this? I received a rather more modest Y10 (!!!), but is it real money, and what can we use it for/on?

tb

You can top off your phone, pass money onto others, or use it in WeChat stores.

Thanks md!

And Happy New Year all!

tb

I'm posting here today in order to close a tangent:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/china...als-china.html

Quoting TB in post 19 of that thread: "this is the medium by which Chinese keep in touch with each other."

I agree. If you travel to China, and fancy interacting with Chinese people, Wechat is a must have.

Wechat wallet, on the other hand, is a "maybe need to have" item.

In the mentioned thread, I told you about the foreign traveler who needed a translator; here is another use case:
1. Joe has 3 roommates
2. Every month, Joe used to collect money from them individually, and physically walk to the landlord's place with cash in hand
3. Now, his roommates send him money via Wechat, and he passes on the total to the landlord (zero face time required)
4. If Joe, or any of his roommates, is short on cash, the credit cards tied to their accounts kick in (NOT a cash advance)

Call me old fashioned cos even after I'd gladly signed up for Alipay (mainly to buy things from Taobao/Tmall) I've still declined to sign up for Wechat Wallet.

Main reason being that I see Wechat as a chatting/social media tool (very good one at that) and that it may not be secure to also put my bank acct details in that same app.

With Alipay it seems a more secure thing, partly cos it was so damn hard to sign up for as a foreigner!

Based off the discussion in the "Where to Search for Travel/Airfare Deals from China?" thread, I set up a number of foreign cards in WeChat Wallet to use for airfare and train purchases, and because using my Chinese debit card for no points and miles all the time was making me ill.

First, setting up the billing address is strange. Rather than allowing me to write my billing city, it's giving me a list of "regions" for my US state, none of which match my city. I chose the closest "region" to my billing city and included all the other details, and it looks like the $0.05 verification charge went through.

However, when trying to make a purchase, the card is always grayed out and marked as unavailable. Is there a verification period where new cards are not available for use?

Try doing a mobile top up first (for yourself or anyone else if you are post-paid). IIRC, I had to do a few of those before I was allowed to buy stuff or send money to others.

Cool, thanks. I was able to do a mobile top up with my CSP. Will do a few more of these throughout the day and see if it lets me buy my train tickets later.

I was able to set up my wife's account for Wallet with her ID card, but trying to set up my own account I'm not sure how to handle the ID card requirement -- what did you 老外 do?

There is a passport as ID option as I recall.

tb

I'm really against WeChat actually because you can hear people screaming wherever you go like there on the phone. It's basically a speaker phone conversation with replay.

Huh ?? , you on a different planet ? Never experienced this before from wherever in the world I am .

This a really dumb reason for rejecting wx, tennisnoob, since the same logic applies to all chat apps, and phones themselves.

I have a friend here who resists wx on the basis that he already has fb messenger, WhatsApp, Skype, and line.

I'm semi-ok with this reasoning because I agree that having too many apps is not good.

That having been said, communicating with him on Friday night via SMS was super annoying. If I could have sent him the address and a picture of the venue, much time would have been saved.

Sure, the other apps support this, but nobody (including my friend) uses them.

Wx will eventually be disrupted by something better. Until that time comes, wx is THE platform.