Per usual, no idea about post frequency, etc. But there it is. We’ve entered the cashless society!

Sina Weibo’s watershed came in 2011 after two high-speed trains crashed in Wenzhou: as officials bungled the response, and then censored news stories, netizens stormed onto Sina’s microblogging platform to voice their outrage and fill gaps of knowledge with educated speculation. Four years later, just as Weibo has seemingly run its course, a different program is stepping into its place as the prime facilitator of unfettered discussion in this country of shackled exchange.

As far as watershed moments go, WeChat’s was notably less newsworthy in the classic sense: it was a sex scandal. Yet it was significant because the sex only became a scandal after — or the exact moment when — a message was transferred from one man’s phone onto another’s via this Tencent chatting platform. By the time the now-infamous Uniqlo sex video reached traditional media — traditional, these days, referring to the Internet — practically everyone who cared had seen it, or knew it existed.

This brings us to the horrific stabbing yesterday morning — outside, of all places, the Sanlitun Uniqlo that nestled into our collective consciousness only a month prior — details of which revealed itself almost exclusively on WeChat. Perhaps this seems unextraordinary, considering how fully WeChat has uplinked with most of our lives. But let’s pretend, for a moment, it were not possible to dart in and out of six separate chat rooms, to easily compare discrepancies in different tellings of the same story, to pose questions to dozens of people at the same time. How many instant messaging windows would you have opened? How many text messages sent? Phone numbers dialed? There was a time not long ago when we’d have to go to the scene to sniff for answers, if that’s what we wanted. Upon being stonewalled by official sources, you’d have to inquire of strangers, and then you would still only have a small piece of the puzzle.

Consider how many of us learned about the victim, the Chinese woman who was stabbed in the back (and how did we know it was the back?). It was likely from the following message, currently going around WeChat, sent from a person who knows both the woman and the foreigner who knelt over her:

Guys, it is very bad news. Our captain roro s wife has been killed by a crazy guy using a 1 meter long knife (“sabre” in french) a few hours ago in sanlitun. They were coming out of the embassy to officialize their wedding when they came accross this crazy chinese guy who told roro he did not like american people. He replied he was french. They left and he inserted his long knife inside isabelle s back.. Trying to defend her, the knife went inside roro s belly twice…. Isabelle died right after she made it to the hospital. Romain is going through an operation now because it was bleeding inside his body..This happened exactly 2 years after the murder of an american citizen in joyce city..
I can t find the words… Huge shock

Hours earlier, “My friend knows someone who knows the girl,” someone may have said in a group you’re in.

And those videos from the aftermath of the attack? Found on WeChat, of course.

As human beings we are inclined to gossip, and WeChat is currently the best tool for our time and place. It has tapped into our instinct to share and learn. Once upon a time, in a bygone age, we would gather around TVs for the 6 o’clock news, thus was our instinct to know and to know collectively. Well, China doesn’t air real news — nothing we can trust, I mean – and who has time for the television anymore? With WeChat, we get all the angles, sometimes simultaneously. We gather sources that we deem credible, and ignore those a bit too eager to forward rumors. We build a story, confirm or deny that story against the observations of others, and pass it into other groups. The transference of knowledge, from one bubble to the next, is seamless and swift. If we thought print media was slow before, print journalists are practically tablet engravers in this age of the intranet. No story published tomorrow will contain information that a smart and plugged-in smartphone user won’t have already obtained from multiple sources tonight.

The service won’t render the Internet obsolete, but it makes certain parts of it less vital: Sina Weibo, with all its ghosts and overseers? Who needs it. Twitter, that echo chamber with character limits? It’s fast becoming a place where the oldest of old-media hang out, those who haven’t ingratiated themselves into enough group chats. Facebook? LOL.

But WeChat, of course, did not rise out of pure innovation. Sure, it’s faster than microblogs (which are faster than blogs, etc.), and more tailored – you can choose who to follow, what groups to join or leave — but it would be much less useful if it were restrictive. That is, if messages were routinely censored, and certain topics disallowed. In other words, if it were a mobile version of Sina Weibo, which has been punished often enough that it will gladly stifle user participation to avoid offending sensibilities.

Finally, WeChat has the ability to create action, similar to 2009-11 Twitter (before Twitter became suddenly dead). A person — any person — can propose an action, and if it makes enough sense, creates enough momentum and gains enough support – all organically, of course, like a snowball — it will translate into movement. Ultimately, for as comfortable as virtual spaces have become, users still seek to translate their virtual conversations into real-world activity. For an example, check out this message currently making the WeChat rounds:

Here is what we all should do: Tomorrow, take a little time out of your day and go leave flowers and/or positive messages on the ground where it happened. We have to change the mentality here, enough with this “If I help, I’ll get in trouble” or “China doesn’t value people’s life” excuses. You can be black, white, yellow red or blue it doesn’t matter, bottom line is this, if you are in China YOU are CHINESE, you want to make China a better place then make it happen. So tomorrow let’s all show that we care, that life matters and that we are concerned by deposing flowers. People might look at you, judge you, ask you to leave but keep in mind that it is because you are doing the right thing. Let’s all make sure that tomorrow by the end of the day, all wechat moments are filled with pictures of flowers, and trust me, by night, people will light candles all over the place. This is how you change mentality, this is how you show you care about something, by doing something as simple as deposing a flower. So what’s your excuse?

I’m not saying there will be “candles all over the place” by nightfall tomorrow, but I’m willing to believe a few people will lay flowers. We’re just talking flowers, by the way, but authorities will notice. They’ll think, Next time, what if it’s not just flowers commemorating the innocent victim of a random attack? What if it’s, say, to commemorate a self-immolation at Tianamen? (Guess where I learned about the man who purportedly set himself on fire at Tiananmen last night?) What if it’s… something bigger?

It seems almost impossible that WeChat escapes official censure. It’s too easy to use, and thereby too dangerous. And this is how an innovative piece of technology that’s born in the People’s Republic of China dies there. Eventually, the only thing left to destroy will be censorship itself.

UPDATE, 4:16 pm: Flowers.

The WeChat-Facebook conflict, a battle for hearts and minds that has simmered for months around hotpot tables where expats and exchange students boast about their respective weaponry, has turned hot.

A series of ads recently released on the Youtube channel WeChatSouthAfrica poke fun at Social Network Boy Mark Zuckerberg. The ads — currently three of them — are set in the study of a German psychiatrist who prescribes “ze WeChat” to a despondent Zuckerberg.

The psychiatrist’s German accent is horrendous (“Nein!”), and he uses a riding crop when angry. I’m amazed he’s not stroking a fluffy white cat. His assistant — “Frauke” — is endowed with long German bones and is so vertical that her head goes out of the shot, a good foot taller than Lady Brienne of Tarth.

Well, at least this shows that the Sino-African relationship goes beyond stadium-building and mineral plunder.

There are lots of other WeChat country-specific Youtube channels – WeChat India, WeChatThai, WeChatMalaysia — but the South African one seems to be the first to do comedy sketches.

Lionel Messi endorses WeChat, i.e. Weixin, i.e. the next Sina Weibo, as some people have called it on account of its functionality and interstellar growth. You can send texts for free (pending Internet connection), start group chats, and deliver photos and voice messages. And as Messi demonstrates in the above 30-second ad, you can communicate via video, too — Instagram, Sina Weibo, and Vine all in one.

I don’t want this to sound like an endorsement for Tencent, an ad upon an ad, because WeChat certainly doesn’t need any more publicity in China. The state-owned telecoms have already teamed up to get their powerful government friends to crack down on the freeness of WeChat’s services, because they feel threatened. But just know the company has big plans for international growth, and Messi will certainly help. What next, the Latin America market?

What’s best about tapping Messi as an endorser is it raises the stakes in China’s tech war, bringing it beyond the borders of this country and out of the reach of petty state-owned enterprise leaders who chuck feces at up-and-coming innovaters who challenge their monopolies. Messi may not have the impact that Michael Jordan did on Nike in the sneaker wars of the 1990s, but our hope is that he spurs Tencent’s great rival, Sina, which has international ambitions of its own, to try to top them. When companies compete, consumers win.

Youku video: behind the scenes of Messi ad.

(H/T Peter Lee)

Those who use Momo and, to a lesser extent (but not much lesser), WeChat probably already know this, but social Apps are great for finding new and — how shall we say — temporary friends. However, if you are cruising around in the great murky sea trawling for bottles or booty, you open yourself up to getting hooked, too. Really open yourself up, actually, because you’re going up against professionals.

As if you needed confirmation that prostitutes are on social Apps to lure clients, please turn your attention to the above video, found by The Nanfang, in which working girls sit in on a lecture on this very subject.

“Everybody wants to get more clients, get more tips,” says the bespectacled lecturer, her curly hair tied into a ponytail to make her the spitting of every matronly “teacher” you’ve seen in pornos. “You can find the answer through our marketing method. Today, I want to tell everybody the reality…”

It turns into a pep talk about the ease with which girls can break the profit ceiling by using Momo, WeChat and Weibo. (We wish Jim Boyce’s Momo party had been like this.) “Really, it’s all very easy!” says the lecturer. She turns toward a TV screen that shows a woman’s profile and proceeds to assess it. A couple of women in the class begin whispering and giggling, but mostly everyone pays close attention.

Men out there: you have no chance.

Watch: Prostitutes in China get a lesson in using Momo, WeChat to lure clients (The Nanfang)

China’s Internet censors are really outdoing themselves with the Southern Weekend scandal. Not only have they blocked searches for “Southern Weekend” on Sina Weibo and other microblogs, they’re making some attempts to block discussion within the Chinese diaspora.

Some writers at Tech in Asia conducted a little experiment today with WeChat (Weixin), a Chinese texting app developed by Tencent, and found trying to type Southern Weekend in Chinese resulted in this Orwellian message:  

The message “南方周末” you sent contains restricted words. Please check it again.

Not easily defeated, they tried again.

We’ve tested it out going from users in China to Thailand (blocked), Thailand to China (blocked), and even Thailand to Singapore (blocked); the prohibited words are not sent at all. The name of the magazine can be sent in English.

Thoughts on why it’s not blocked in English?

In related matters, China Digital Times has a full rundown of search terms blocked on Sina Weibo thanks to Southern Weekend:

January 6-7
- south (南): nán
- place (方): fāng
- week (周): zhōu
- end (末): mò

January 7 onwards
-Southern

-Weekend

- nf + zm

- nanfang
- read and understand China (读懂中国): Southern Weekly’s motto is “Here, read and understand China” (在这里，读懂中国)
- China dream (中国梦): The title of the original Southern Weekly editorial was “China’s Dream, the Dream of Constitutionalism” (中国梦宪政梦).
- constitutional government (宪政): Also translated as “constitutionalism.”
- censor (审查)
- propaganda department (宣传部)
- Central Propaganda [Department] (中宣)
- violate the constitution (违宪)
- dedication message (献词)
- message of greeting (贺词)

Nonetheless, South China Morning Post assures us that celebrities are finding their way to voice their opinions via social media:

[Former Google China chief Li Kaifu], a Taiwanese-born American, said on his microblog: “From now on, I will only talk about east, west and north, as well as Monday through to Friday” – omitting references to the south or the weekend. The newspaper’s Chinese name is literally translated as “Southern Weekend”.

Personally, I think “restricted words” sounds like a great title for a high school poem, or a linguistics dissertation.

UPDATE, 1/12, 2:09 pm: Tencent called the case a “glitch,” but Tech in Asia replies, “But there’s clear evidence (see the screenshot collage above) of very specific ‘sensitive’ phrases being blocked by the app – particularly the Chinese name of the outspoken magazine Southern Weekend.”

Now China’s WeChat App is Censoring Its Users Globally (Tech in Asia)