[ploggingdev]

Can something like WeChat work in the West? This is basically like an OS inside an app, you can book taxis, movie tickets, play games, send money etc. Having all the functionality integrated makes life easier, but comes at the cost of privacy : one company knows about your entire life.

[nullnilvoid]

Don't Google and Facebook know about your entire life already?

[akoncius]

well yeah, but it doesn't mean that it is good in general

[Markoff]

it can, it's called websites and you open them in browser, not sure why would I want wrapper app like Wechat to harvest all my data

you can do pretty much all user car scenarios of what by opening google.com and gmail let's say (and i am saying this as someone who doesn't like Google ecosystem)

the thing is meant if things which wechat does are pain in the ass to do in China, not so much in West, so there is no need for us to integrate it, for instance card payments are widespread in West, not do much in China so they came with online payments with QR codes, same goes for paying utilities, just open internet banking of your Bank and pay, it will be probably faster than paying within wechat

i am telling you this as someone who lived in China for years and used all these services

heck even within China i was pretty much using only for chatting, wall and small money transfers

for sure not for buying plane tickets, Cinema tickets, paying utilities, etc., even for most of those there are cheaper options than their promoted partner, but yeah if you are dumb or lazy and dunno how to use internet them i can see how is wechat appealling

[seanmcdirmid]

We have apps for that already. Even in china you can download and use the didi dache app rather than getting a taxi throb wechat.