http://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/
Put it all together, and you can get some pretty creative results. Take Chinese toy company Dan Dan Man, which created Mon-Mon (user ID: idandanman), a bluetooth-enabled stuffed animal toy that integrates WeChat with the offline world. Parents can use the Mon-Mon official account in WeChat to send personal voice messages and pre-recorded English courses or bedtime stories to the toy while they are at work or traveling. Kids immediately get those stories or messages, and can even press Mon-Mon’s belly to reply to their parents’ WeChat account in a message delivered back as a voicemail.
monmon_a16zWhile this is just a toy — and funnily enough, a character that started off as a popular digital sticker on WeChat! — it shows the potential of integrating messaging platforms into the physical world when all the parts of the buffalo, er, smartphone are utilized.
Of course, there are many other, more useful examples of such online-offline integrations. With the 7-Eleven official account (user ID: GD7-11) for example, users can pay at 7-Eleven and Family Mart physical stores through a breezy, easy payment process where the cashier uses a standard handheld barcode scanner to get the customer’s Quick Pay barcode at the point of sale. 7-Eleven can then also target users with custom promotions at an optimal frequency that doesn’t flood them with unwanted marketing. Meanwhile, the Mei Wei Bu Yong Deng official account (user ID: mwbyd-now) lets users search through a directory of restaurants nearby, see how many people are currently waiting in line for a table at those restaurants, and even grab a number to wait in line without being physically present at the restaurant.
And finally, it’s worth noting that WeChat is, according to Tim Cook on Apple’s most recent earnings call, one of the top 3rd-party apps used on the Apple Watch. The possibilities for online-offline integration through wearables haven’t really begun to be explored yet….