Video Title: How China Is Changing Your Internet Video Description: In China, a sheltered internet has given rise to a new breed of app, and American companies are taking notice. What was once known as the land of cheap rip-offs may now offer a glimpse at the future. PART I: Intro 1. If you are sitting in the United States or Europe right now, you’ve probably never used a Chinese app, but the reality is, if you want to know how the internet will develop, China, the land once known for its cheap rip-offs, has actually become a guide to the future. PART II: The creation of the Chinese Swamp Monster 2.1 You know, the internet is the internet, but for China the internet is more like an intranet. It’s largely walled off from the Western world by this incredible complex system of filters and blocks that we call the Great Firewall. And basically the Great Firewall blocks any foreign site the Communist Party doesn’t think it can control. 2.2 So that means there is no Facebook, no Twitter, no Google. Instead, what filled the internet vacuum was a generation of Chinese copycats that have grown into huge companies. 2.3 So for Google, you had Baidu; for YouTube, you had Youku; for Twitter, you had Sina Weibo, and the list goes on and on. 2.4 It’s almost as if the Chinese internet is a lagoon as an aside to the greater ocean of the internet, and in that lagoon there are these swamp monster apps that bear some resemblance to the creatures in the ocean but are mutated in some ways because they evolved in a different kind of environment. PART III: The Chinese Swamp Monster Leaves the Pond 3.1 But things have started to shift, in the sense that before, no one outside of the lagoon really cared about the swamp monsters. But now all of a sudden, some of the features they’ve developed are so amazing that Western apps are trying to copy them. And the greatest example of this is WeChat. 3.2 WeChat is an example of, for lack of a better word, a super-app. It’s a Swiss Army knife that basically does everything for you. 3.3 It’s your WhatsApp, Facebook, Skype and Uber. It’s your Amazon, Instagram, Venmo and Tinder. But it’s other things we don’t even have apps for. There are hospitals that have built out whole appointment booking systems. There are investment services. There are even heat maps that show how crowded a place is, be it your favorite shopping mall or a popular tourist site. The list of services goes on basically forever. 3.4 But it’s not the variety of things you can do on WeChat that makes it so powerful, it’s the fact that they’re all in one app. So why does that matter? PART IV: The Power of the Super-App 4.0 These are real people. Using the app in real ways. (We just made up the story.) 4.1 Hypothetically, imagine you’re sitting at home and one day you notice your corgi is dirty. You open WeChat, hit a few buttons and a few hours later a man shows up at your door with some shampoo and a big vacuum. Your dog gets cleaned, and he looks great. You take a photo. You share it with your friends and tag the dog cleaning business. You haven’t left the app. 4.2 Your friend who likes Hello Kitty and works a boring office job is slacking off at work and looking at WeChat. She sees the photo of your clean corgi. She decides she wants her poodle cleaned. She clicks the tag on your photo and orders the same service. Within seconds the man with the big vacuum is on his way to her house. She pays him, and he’s happy because he got paid instantly on WeChat. She starts chatting with you to thank you. Neither of you have left the app. 4.3 While chatting, she tells you about a new, hip noodle joint. She says, “You have to come.” It’s a shlep, but you accept. She orders food while still at her desk. You order a taxi. She pays for the food. On the way to her house, the man with the big vacuum invests the money he earned from both of you into a wealth management product that’s probably a little too risky. Neither of you, nor the man with the big vacuum, have left the app. 4.4 Both of you arrive, and the app tells the kitchen you’re there. Your WeChat profile photo pops up on the wall. Its an old photo from that year you had that weird part in your hair. Of course, she makes a comment. Your food is served. You notice your meat is a bit overcooked, so you snap a photo and post a disparaging restaurant review. You’re already on your phone, and you remember you still owe your friend money because she paid. You transfer her money. Neither of you, the man with the big vacuum, nor the restaurant, have left the app. 4.5 At the restaurant: There are no menus. There are no waiters. There is no cashier. There is only WeChat. 4.6 By rolling so many functions into one single app, it’s altered the concept of virality. It’s no longer just videos or images or tweets that can go viral — it’s a dog washer, noodles, all sorts of companies and products that get the push of a social network. 4.7 Here in China, that network is 700 million people. Part V: The Costs of the Super-App 5.1 Sounds great, right? Well it is, but using a single app to find a date, schedule an oil change or notarize a document also enables WeChat to collect a staggering volume of personal data. 5.2 They know what you talk about, who you talk about it with, what you read, where you go, why you’re going there, who’s there, how you spend money when you’re online, how you spend money when you’re offline. The list goes on indefinitely. 5.3 For advertisers, this is miracle: It’s the combined data of Facebook, Amazon, Google and PayPal, all in one place. The problem is, all of the data is information Chinese companies are forced to share with the Chinese government, which has a long record of human rights violations and isn’t exactly shy about stalking its citizens. Part VI: Outro 6.1 So if you’re not in China, why does this matter? It matters because we’re starting to see a number of Western tech companies attempt to replicate super-apps like WeChat. 6.2 For the companies, it’s incredibly powerful, and for you and me it’s a convenient and even transformative technology. 6.3 But of course, it could also be problematic. Concentrating so much data in so few hands could lay the groundwork for an Orwellian world where companies and governments can track every single movement you make.