Bullet, China's Latest Messaging App, Pops Shots at Top Local Rival WeChat (fortune.com)

This week, China's most downloaded app wasn't a game or a short-video app like normal but a new messaging service called Bullet. The app's startling assent to the top marks a rare challenge to Tencent's WeChat -- China's go-to choice for messaging. From a report: Bullet, so called for the swiftness of its service, specializes in instant voice messaging, whereby users communicate through a rally of short audio clips. That method hasn't caught on in the West, but in China, it's the norm. WeChat popularized that style of communication during its early days, in 2012, but its system has always been comparably limited. For one, 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. Also, sending audio files makes it harder to scan through previous messages and check what's already been said, in case you've forgotten an important detail.

Bullet has smartly solved both of these problems. Firstly, it allows users to scrub through audio files and start playback at any point -- a simple enough fix that it's surprising WeChat hasn't introduced this function itself. (Scrubbing through voice messages is even a feature on Facebook-owned WhatsApp, which introduced voice messages after WeChat did.) Bullet's second solution is more impressive, but also not inimitable. The app instantly transcribes audio into a text message and sends the text along with the voice clip, leaving a visible record of the conversation.

Comments

Re:In Jyna they have scrubbable audio, oooooooh sn

[jblues]

Definitely they want this to catch on. Sentiment analysis. Named entity extraction. Topic Segmentation. Relationship extraction. Natural Language Processing.

WeShoot

[mentil]

The problem with Bullet is that periodically, the CCP uses it to send you a picture of an executed family member, and charges you $1 for the 'privilege'. I filed a bug report a few minutes ago, and I think I hear knocking on the door now. That's customer service! Be right back...

Re:Is it because of Chinese lettering?

[tlhIngan]

I'm slightly confused as to the popularity of this sort of voice chat. For phonetic alphabets it's far faster to read messages than hear them spoken, even if you talk like you're written by Aaron Sorkin. Writing can also be nigh as fast as talking for anyone quick enough.

Is simplified chinese still such a burden that talking is easier and more convenient, or is it some other thing that makes this popular?

Well, I think it's a combination of things. First off, remember screen size is a status symbol. If you're holding your phone using two hands (and I've seen it happen), it's pretty damn hard to type. Plus, you compose characters - either by drawing strokes or picking strokes to generate the character. Again, this requires a fair bit of dexterity when one's hands are otherwise doing something else (e.g., holding the phone).

Second, voice mail chat seems extremely common - I've seen people basically MMS each other audio - they say a few lines, hit send, wait for a response, listen to it, reply, etc. I don't know if voice minutes cost serious money or something, but they seem to enjoy leaving people 5 second voice messages rather than speaking directly with them. I'm guessing it's harder for people to find a conversation that happened a week ago but still able to bring up topics that happened a day ago.