The Limitations of Facebook's Services

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I think the broader point you're trying to make is that this is more of a personal slash leisure slash more probably communicate with friends. This is why Facebook is so valuable and so powerful because they do own that layer. I mean, in the US anyway, you don't really go to Facebook for anything beyond sort of time wasting. The difference is the amount of activity that is done through through WeChat is just on a completely different scale than anything that's done on Facebook or line or any of the other sort of sort of chat apps.

Ben and James discuss how leverage shifts in a value chain, why WeChat is so powerful in China, and why that is a problem for Apple.

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Links

Ben Thompson: Apple’s China Problem — Stratechery
Ben Thompson: Messaging: Mobile’s Killer App — Stratechery
Ben Thompson: Slack and the State of Technology at the End of 2015 — Stratechery
Connie Chan: When One App Rules Them All: The Case of WeChat and Mobile in China — a16z
Ben Thompson: Peak Google — Stratechery
Ben Thompson: Beyond Disruption — Stratechery
James Allworth: The Blessing of Failure — Medium
Ben Thompson: The State of Consumer Technology at the End of 2014 — Stratechery
Ben Thompson: Why Doesn’t Apple Enable Sustainable Businesses on the App Store? — Stratechery