Masha Borak wrote on TechNode about China’s mobile payment platforms transforming online marketing.

“The most basic type of interaction is to invite customers to follow the brand’s official WeChat account to get notifications for their order,” Graziani told TechNode.

Another is to automatically enroll customers in a group purchase, he added. Users share their purchase with friends on social media and get a discount in return. For brands, this can be a way to create some additional viral engagement.

Many vendors get the consumers to do the marketing to drive sales via gift cards or coupons. Another way is to offer a discount coupon if the consumer follow the brand’s official WeChat account. This allows the brand to send notifications about promotions or give consumers more discount coupons to lure them back to make purchases. These aren’t new marketing tactics, but the use of WeChat to make it as seamless and minimise friction increases the appeal to the consumers.

It’s become a habit for me to check for Meituan or Koubei promotions when ordering at restaurants and during payment.

The trend is especially popular among restaurants, which are CJI’s main customers. Some restaurants are giving up entirely on the concept of the classical paper menu. To place an order, guests scan a QR code that leads them to an online menu where they pick their favorite dishes and pay with the mobile payment app of their choice.

This is becoming increasingly common. All of the restaurants I’ve been to in the past two months have QR code stickers on each table for ordering and payment. Instead of trying to get the attention of a busy wait staff during peak periods, we order with our smartphones. Likewise when it comes to paying the bill. Cheaper and faster. Attractive incentives for the consumers.

Felix Salmon wrote for WIRED about the false tale of Amazon’s industry-conquering juggernaut.

Still, as Bezos will readily admit, most of his investment ideas fail. Just because Amazon spends a huge amount of money on, say, trying to create a new social network, doesn’t mean it’s going to have any visible success doing so. After Amazon spent $545 million to acquire Diapers.com, for instance, it ended up shuttering the business, claiming it couldn’t make it profitable.

Ultimately, Amazon is not a disruptive force so much as it’s just a big, rich company which spends a lot of resources trying a lot of things. That’s smart, for Amazon, but it certainly doesn’t mean that industry after industry is going to get disrupted the minute the Seattle giant lays eyes on it. Even Amazon’s core business of retailing hasn’t changed all that much: e-commerce still accounts for less than 10 percent of total sales, and Amazon is a minority of that 10 percent.

Amazon goes into many industries but it isn’t a big player in the field. It just has a presence that helps to spread the Amazon brand and influence. Is Amazon the biggest player or a disruptive force in advertising, cloud computing, TV shows, book publishing, voice assistant manufacturer? How about e-Commerce? Amazon relies on a lot of third-party sellers to drive the platform.

TechCrunch reported on Google launching its first WeChat mini program as its China experiments continue.

WeChat has become the key distribution channel in China and that’s why Google is embracing it with its first mini program — 猜画小歌, a game that roughly translates to ‘Guess My Sketch.’ There’s no English announcement but the details can be found in this post on Google’s Chinese blog, which includes the QR code to scan to get the game.

The app is a take on games like Zynga’s Draw Something, which puts players into teams to guess what the other is drawing. Google, however, is adding a twist. Each player teams up with an AI and then battles against their friends and their AIs. You can find an English version of the game online here.

Interesting move. The advantage is that the mini programs are platform agnostic. Both iOS and Android users will be able to use the mini program within WeChat.

Mini programs are a huge convenience if you happen to be part of the WeChat ecosystem. I enjoy using them for lightweight functions because I can launch them within WeChat without having to download a separate app that needs to be updated or configured. Mini programs simply ask for permission to access your WeChat profile instead making you go through a registration process. If the app requires a payment service, it’ll ask for access to your WeChat Pay wallet.

I use the Shenzhen Metro mini program in my daily commute. Instead of having to download an app for a single function, mini programs allow you to access such single functions with ease from within WeChat.

AppleInsider reported that the new Samsung ad attacks iPhone X download speed, ignores performance benchmarks.

Regardless, the ad clearly doesn’t step into other, arguably more crucial, areas of phone performance where our tests had iPhone X in a clear lead. Looking at the Geekbench results, iPhone X completely destroys the S9+, especially in single core performance. The iPhone came in with single- and multi-core scores of 4,243 and 10,433, respectively, while the S9+ managed scores of 2,007 and 8,307.

Graphics-wise, iPhone X still outpaced the S9+. The S9+ scored 14,308, very close to, but not topping, iPhone’s 15,177. In all our testing, there were a couple tests where the S9+ won out, but by-and-large the iPhone X was the more powerful device.

Next year, Samsung is expected to release the Galaxy S10 and S10+, which will most likely attempt to more evenly compete with Face ID. Currently, the S9 and S9+ use a 2D scanner when validating a face and is much less accurate than Apple’s 3D infrared TrueDepth camera system.

Samsung is shooting itself in the foot by going with an ad that draws comparison to the iPhone X.

Comparing download speeds makes a lot of sense since it is something the devices have full control over, not the internet service providers. Not to mention the signal strengths and other factors that might affect download speeds. Because download speed is the key criteria most people look at when choosing which phone to buy.

Sarcasm. In case anyone didn’t notice that.

Gizmodo reported that a bug in Samsung’s default texting app is sending random pics to other people.

According to user reports, the problem stems from Samsung Messages, the default texting app on Galaxy devices, which (for reasons that haven’t been determined), is erroneously sending pictures stored on the devices to random contacts via SMS. One user on Reddit even claims that instead of sending one pic, Samsung Messages sent out their entire photo gallery to a contact in the middle of the night.

Scary.

The scariest part about this bug is that when Samsung Messages bugs out sends pics to other people, it reportedly doesn’t leave any evidence of it doing so, which means people may not know their photos have been released into the wild until it’s too late.

Are you using a Samsung Galaxy device now? What if your phone has been sending this out and you didn’t know because the people receiving your photos aren’t saying anything?

Digital Music News reported that Apple Music has surpassed Spotify’s US subscriber count.

Both Apple Music and Spotify have more than 20 million subscribers in America, with Apple now a hair ahead.  The source requested that we withhold exact subscriber numbers beyond mentioning ’20 million plus,’ to protect confidentiality.

The data for 2018 also shows that Apple is experiencing a far stronger rate-of-growth in the United States, suggesting a wider lead over the coming months.  Trial users were not part of the comparison.

The results aren’t entirely surprising.  Back in February, the Wall Street Journal noted that Apple’s US-based subscriber growth rate was 5% in the U.S., compared to Spotify’s 2%.  Using that data, the Journal predicted that Apple Music was ‘on the verge’ of surpassing Spotify.

Better user engagement on Apple Music.