China’s most downloaded free offering on the Apple’s App Store recently isn’t a fun game or a well-known platform, according to app analytics platform App Annie. Instead, it’s a new instant-messaging tool called Bullet Message (子彈簡訊 in Chinese), launched by cellphone maker Smartisan on Aug. 20.
Image: the official logo of Bullet Message on Weibo
With a blue-and-white logo that mimics Facebook Messenger, Bullet Message promotes itself as 「fast as a bullet」 and 「born for efficient communication」. It has streamlined the process and generally provides a greater user experience by smartly solving the problems of WeChat on voice messages.
Its main selling point is real-time transcriptions of spoken messages, supported by voice recognition company iFlytek, which instantly transcribes audio into a text message and sends the text along with the voice clip, leaving a visible record of the conversation. Huxiu, a media outlet, says the transcription feature is accurate 97% of the time in Mandarin in Bullet Message. WeChat has a transcription feature, too, but the user has to choose to transcribe each message.
Image: capitalwatch.com
There are other innovative functions of this new app. Bullet Message allows users to scrub through audio files and start playback at any point. In contrast, WeChat only allows voice messages to be played in full, so if a listener misses a vital word towards the end of a clip, they have to start over from the beginning. Besides, in Bullet Message Users can also send voice messages without clicking into a specific chat by clicking a small microphone icon next to the recipient’s name.
The app’s startling ascent to the top marks a rare challenge to WeChat. The public is curious about whether it could topple WeChat, China’s ubiquitous messaging app, from its title of the most popular social messaging platform. The founder of Smartisan, Mr Luo, conceded in the Weibo that 「uninstalling WeChat is not realistic」. The new app is not aimed at 「challenging WeChat」. 「We are creating a niche product for people who care about the efficiency of communication,」 he wrote.
Owing to its creation of an all-encompassing ecosystem to retain users within the app, WeChat has been widely considered essential for daily life in China. Nearly 1 billion users rely on it to pay bills, hail cabs, and much else in addition to sending messages to one another. Thus, it’s interesting to see how Bullet Messaging can simplify things again.
However, its quick rise comes with some criticism and incredulity about this offering.
Firstly, Bullet Message is subject to the bugs in data protection. Some users reported that anyone can access the personal page of each user in Bullet Message and obtain the private personal information, including ID, username, mobile number, the account of Weibo, WeChat or QQ, etc., causing big hidden trouble of information leakage.
Secondly, while Bullet Message markets its idea of 「acquaintance sociality」, in fact, you can still send messages to strangers who are not in the contact list of the app. Some offenders make use of this feature and send porn or disturbing messages to other innocent users. Matthew Brennan, the WeChat expert also illustrated such issue on Twitter a few days ago. If the user wants to block those who keep sending disturbing messages to him, he needs to add it as a friend at first, which is an unreasonable setting.
Image: the screenshot of the Twitter of Matthew Brennan
In short, it remains too early to determine whether Bullet Message will become a true challenger to WeChat, as it is still at the very nascent stage full of imperfection. Without a rich ecosystem of services, Bullet Message is unlikely to divert followers away from WeChat. The upstart’s key selling points are all based on user experience, which can be easily emulated. For now, it is just a shot across the bow, providing WeChat with an incentive - and perhaps a guide- to improve its own audio messaging service.
This year has seen a spate of challengers taking on China’s tech giants.
In entertainment, the short-form video streaming app, Douyin, sent ripples across the industry by winning users』 time not just from competing for video services but also from other entertainment such as Tencent’s gaming.
Image: Logo of Douyin
In retail, three-year-old Pinduoduo has wooed shoppers and merchants and launched an initial public offering recently, giving it a market valuation of nearly $30bn and beating Taobao and JD.
Image: Logo of Pinduoduo
Reference:
https://qz.com/1373138/wechat-challenger-bullet-message-now-tops-in-chinas-app-store/
http://fortune.com/2018/08/31/bullet-messaging-app-china-wechat/
https://www.ft.com/content/9086c046-ab65-11e8-89a1-e5de165fa619
https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1002840/sleek-and-simple%2C-bullet-app-takes-aim-at-wechat
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