global messaging trends: wechat, facebook, bots, and apps

Grata.co April 2016 Chat 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.

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