Category Archives: Ideas

There are always some ideas or questions that I think in my mind, I thought it would be good to record them down

On Whatsapp and the less known Tencent QQ

Recently the news on WhatsApp being bought by Facebook is all over the place, it seems to be a big deal. As a user of WhatsApp for about 2 years or so, I went ahead and posted about “how shocking” I was when I learnt that the messaging “giant” had been bought by the SNS “giant”.

However, when I really think back on WhatsApp and its exact features, something else came to my mind. It is the messaging application that I have been using since about primary 6 back in China – Tencent QQ. And surprisingly, or rather not, I realized that it is technically much more older than WhatsApp but with all the functions that WhatsApp provides.

QQ has all the basic chat functions, it also has a group chat function(QQ群) since 2000, which supports up to 500 users in the group, and within the group, you can send text, voice messages, pictures or even files to all the members. It appears that QQ group would be older and more capable than WhatsApp in terms of group chat functions.

In the beginning, QQ only runs on computers. However, that was the era when phones did not have coloured screen. By the time Nokia phones with its Symbian OS became popular in China, QQ has been able to run on Symbian OS. And when iOS and Android came out, respective QQ apps were also developed by Tencent to run on these platforms. So QQ also beats Whatsapp in terms of cross-platform compatibility.

So what is the exact reason that causes Whatsapp to be much more well-known(outside China) than QQ? Why people(outside China) did not use QQ before WhatsApp came out? I tried to come up with a few possible reasons:

Possible reason 1: Tencent’s Marketing strategy. We can safely assume that the Chinese market by itself is big enough for Tencent and it would not want to devote manpower and resources to market it outside China. (We can see that Tencent is now putting efforts to market its WeChat outside China and it is largely successful)

Possible reason 2: General impression and stereotypes on Chinese products. This could also be related to the general stereotypes that people have about Chinese products, i.e. unreliable, potentially linked to communist ideas. So even if Tencent did try to promote QQ outside China, it could have failed because people just do not trust Chinese products.

Possible reason 3: The time factor. Maybe QQ was just not developed too early, not at the correct time to be successful. This happened to Microsoft when it tried to sell the idea of tablet way back before iPad. It could be that the need for instant messaging on mobile devices just came about in recent years. WhatsApp seized this this opportunity and cater to people’s need at the correct time.

Possible reason 4: WhatsApp is more focused and links to phone number: WhatsApp is only a messaging app, it does not come with other functions like QQ games, QQ pet or QQ show(a virtual avatar that you can modify like a Barbie doll). WhatsApp is also linked directly to the phone number so that it can get all the phone contacts on WhatsApp and act as a replacement for SMS for people with internet connection. This makes WhatsApp more professional as a messaging app. People can just enjoy messaging like sending normal SMS without distractions. After all, we are comparing them as messaging applications.

Possible reason 5: Ads. Ads is one significant feature of QQ, it appears almost everywhere unless you pay some kind of membership fee. This is arguably the preferred method of many apps nowadays, however, for WhatsApp , we see no ads at all and instead of paying the yearly subscription fee, somehow I can use it for free for over a year with my account automatically renewed.

That is all that I could come up with at this moment. And I am not sure if they are sufficient to provide an explanation. Anyway, back to WhatsApp and Facebook time!

Add-on: On the topic of growth and expanding market internationally, here is a relevant answer from Quora.

How important is Google as a search engine, really?

When viewed in an inertial reference frame, an object either is at rest or moves at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by an external force.

– Newton’s First law

There is some issue with my connection to Google today. And surprisingly(or rather not surprisingly) there seems to be no problem in connecting to Bing. (And actually it is faster than I expected for displaying search result.)

This makes me think about the importance of Google, as a search engine. For all this time, I have been using Google as my default search engine, without wondering why it is default in the first place. Then I realized that the only reason I am not using other search engines like Bing or Yahoo right now is that I am used to Google. I am totally unsure of how Google is better than other search engines. In fact, I know that other search engines have their advantages over Google, for example, Bing gives the answer for gcd function in search whereas Google does not. How exactly does this “default” habit help Google to be the No.1 search engine?

In times of break-down like this, I would not hesitate to switch to an alternative search engine. Afterall, the information that I am looking for is on sites such as Quora, Facebook or Wikipedia, not on Google. It is just a tool for me to get to the destination that I wanted, and when one tool breaks down, why not just take another tool, knowing that it would work equally well?

Perhaps that is reason why Google is spend resources on Android, Google+, YouTube and more recently Google Glass. Being the default search engine now does not guarantee the default search engine forever, in fact, it is hardly the case. What is really needed is an ecosystem that make people depend on Google, not just in terms of searching. People are using Google’s different services, like Gmail and Google Calender because of the benefit of this whole integrated data and user experience.

The irony is that Google is so slow right now that I have to use Bing to get this image

In the end, I feel that Google, as a search engine, may not always be the default for people. When it fails at times, people may consider changing it. However, if the ecosystem of Google, the whole package of services, become the default for people, it will be much harder for people to switch. Even if some major disruption happens, people may still want to stick to Google, where they store all their data.

Data really means a lot. For me, all the data I stored in Google may be sufficient to create an identity for me.

[Good Article] Taking a “War of Words” Too Literally

I want to share an article that has influenced me a lot. This piece was given to me during one of the GP lesson when I was in junior college.

The following is adapted from Deborah Tannen’s Taking a “War of Words” Too Literally, (March, 1998), Washington Post

Everywhere we turn, there is evidence that, in public discourse, we prize contentiousness and aggression more than cooperation and conciliation. Headlines blare about the Star Wars, the Mommy Wars, the Baby Wars, the Mamography Wars; everything is posed in terms of battles and duels, winners and losers, conflicts and disputes. Biographies have metamorphosed into demonographies whose authors don’t just portray their subjects warts and all, but set out to dig up as much dirt as possible, as if the story of a person’s life is contained in the warts, only the warts, and nothing but the warts.

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About everything and nothing

I have been thinking about this issue of being everything and being nothing for a while.

In CS1231 lecture, the lecture mentioned a quote that is something like”A friend of everybody is a friend of nobody.”

I also realized during sem1 that “greedy algorithm does not work in university.”, trying to do a lot of things simply makes me incapable of achieving anything.

This is true for my CCAs, when I took up too many duties and responsibilities, I just simply cannot accommodate all of them into my schedule. When I have friends from totally different cliques that are very exclusive in nature, I found myself hanging in the air, not belonging to anywhere.

So it is ture that we must abandon something in order to achieve others?

What I Value

I only do things that I think is meaningful, in one way or another.

How do I justify meaningful can be subjective, generally I want to benefit the society that I am interacting with. This includes reducing conflicts, contributing to the advancement of the society and making other people’s lives more enjoyable.

I also want to make sure that the meaningful things allow me to be a better person, this includes gaining of knowledge that is relevant to me and the world that I am connected with, understanding new ideas that may prove to be useful or enlightening.

I want to minimize trouble for others due to my action

This is pretty self-explanatory. However, I do take this very seriously. If I realize that my action will cause some trouble for others, I will try to avoid it. And I do this deliberately. For instance, If I realize the bus cannot accommodate all the people at the station and I am not in a rush, I would step back and allow people to board the bus first.

Motivation for work is to create value, not to earn money.

I do my work because I see its significance or value. Money or other forms of rewards are just a recognition of my efforts, no the motivation behind my work.

I don’t like the idea of choosing jobs based on the salary rather than the values that can be created.

I don’t like people who want to become bankers or investors because they want to become rich.

Living in a society of meritocracy, I believe the reward for me would be proportional to the value that I created. Hence, by creating values, I would be able to get sufficient money for my life.