Look Around, now called "people nearby" is a function you enable that allows you to see anyone using we chat nearby you at that moment who has also enabled the "people nearby" function. You can then send a short message to them which can result in a conversation if they accept your message. It is basically a tool to pick up women or men as you can filter it by sex. Although moondog seems to know people who use "people nearby" for business reasons (i.e. in the HKIA lounge), the only people I know who use it are using it to find romantic liasions. Odds of success are around 99%if you're reasonably attractive or rich or charming.

People Nearby is just a small part of we chat, however. The functionality of we chat is much better than what's app and everyone of my friends in China who was a what's app user a year ago has switched completely to we chat. If Tencent can gain traction with this thing in Southeast Asia, Europe, and Latin America as well as in the States amongst the Chinese population I think we could be looking at the first Chinese App that truly goes global.

Let's say you're in the vicinity of the GY and they happen to be hosting a meeting of the Shanghai Single Ladies Association, and Lilly sends you some pictures of the event in real time. Would you not stop by? This is just a small part of WX for business. When I return to Shanghai (hopefully very soon), I look forward to showing you some of the things we've done.

Still shows : Look Around on site from here.

http://www.wechat.com/img/features/33.png

http://www.wechat.com/en/features.html#around

You need to upgrade to 5.0; then you will no longer see "look around".

I think I need to move to a place where there are people. Can't find any people around here within … 1-2 km radius. Maybe a few coyotes.:D

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.