Best Chat Apps for Asian Blockchain Communities
Choosing the best messaging apps to grow a following
Introduction
Out of the countless social media tools for Asia, what do you use to maximise the effectiveness of your community engagement and how do you know that you are using the right social media to reach out to your potential customers? The crypto industry is global and distributed, do you ever feel bewildered looking at the different apps that your social media managers have you downloaded and wondering why the Asians are having so many chat apps? What exactly are they? In this article, we will introduce you to the top messaging apps to start and grow a community for your blockchain project in Asia. We will mention the features, pros and cons of each app, and provide some examples from experience. This way you have a better idea which one is the best for your project.
Each country in Asia is different and the crypto users would have different preferences for chat apps. This article discusses country-specific messaging apps in Asia.
Key Characteristics
- Official Homepage
- Country of origin: Mainland China
- Controlling owner: Tencent Inc.
- Available languages: Chinese Mandarin, English and over 10 more languages
- Users: over 1 billion monthly active users (MAU) worldwide
- Limitations: Maximally 500 members per WeChat group. Once a group reaches 100 members, only users with a linked mobile number can be invited
- Bots and programmability: Official WeChat API Documentation. Third-party WeChat Bot Guide. Unclear official policy towards chatbots. Bot or microservices can be programmed but some bots accessing logins to private accounts as well as related to cryptocurrency were shut down.
- Usage: Most popular chat app for private or group chats/calls, mobile payments and microservices in Mainland China and for the Mandarin-speaking community.
- Encryption and privacy: Official privacy policy. No end-to-end encryption for messages, only transport encryption where WeChat holds the decryption key. Controversial privacy policy as seen in numerous online discussions.
Description
WeChat is the most widely used chat app in Mainland China and enjoys in that respect a monopoly status. It acts as a combination of Whatsapp and Facebook. You can privately message individual friends by adding them via your phone’s contacts. Once you have become connected, you can access their Moments, which is similar to the News Feed of Facebook where you can see updates of what your friends are doing published as text, photos or videos. Because almost all smartphone users in Mainland China are on WeChat, information of projects can be easily spread via their Moments.
A group chat can have up to 500 people in it and you cannot share an invitation QR code once the group exceeds 100 members.
WeChat just started the multi-admin management feature for groups. Previously, only the group owner, the initial creator of a group, can manage the group chat, but now the group owner can delegate administrative rights to other admins.
There is no function such as pinning a message on the top of a chat or having custom-made additional functions directly embedded in the group chat. You cannot mute anyone in the group unlike in other chat apps. If someone is spamming, your only option is to remove them from the chat. Let us go through an example group chat on WeChat to illustrate some of its features.
When you first get invited into a group, you will see a list of nicknames of all existing members at the top. Select the three dots at the top-right corner to see more options.
You can see and send friend request to any member of the group and add them to your contacts (subjected to their approval). Only the owner of the group can change the group’s name.
As a group owner, you also get additional admin options such as removing certain members from the community chat. Anyone can share the group QR code to invite new members (if the group does not exceed 100 people). However, the group owner reserve the rights to revoke any invitation. The group notice is what the group owner puts up (usually a summary of what the group does). It is possible to implement mini-programs, which are microservices on the WeChat platform. Sticky on top feature is useful when your WeChat is being flooded with tons of chat and you wish to pin the important group chats (like blockchain project community chat you are currently following closely) on the top of your chat window. Mute notification is useful when the chat is flooded with messages and you wish to opt out of being notified of new incoming messages within the chat.
You can change your nickname to an Alias, clear the chat history or leave the group.
The other option to grow a following on WeChat is to use their Official Accounts as a means to write posts to engage with subscribers.
Due to the recent regulatory restrictions in China, there is a risk that accounts related to blockchain and cryptocurrency may be deleted without prior warnings.
We go through the Huobi WeChat Official Account here to illustrate the features.
You can search publicly for any Official Accounts registered on WeChat and start following them. You can share the account with friends, view their previous blog posts and message directly the owner of the account.
WeChat faces regulatory uncertainties. As a result, Tencent has the power to close groups or Official Accounts at its discretion. Recent Chinese cyberspace laws require group owners to be responsible for the content distributed in their groups as well as discussions held by the group members. The group owner might even face jail time should illegal activity takes place in the groups. The latest regulations state that private solicitation of fundraising are illegal, which implies that ICOs are not permitted.
As a result some of the Chinese crypto investors moved to Telegram to circumvent the regulatory restrictions, however, WeChat still remains the base for crypto-related groups as Mainland users need VPN to access most foreign chat apps. This makes it hard for users in China to migrate to competitors of WeChat.
Telegram
Key Characteristics
- Official Homepage
- Country of origin: Russia
- Controlling owner: Telegram Messenger LLP
- Available languages: over 13 languages including Russian, English, German, French and Korean
- Users: over 200 million MAU worldwide
- Limitations: As an individual user you can join up to 50 channels. But you can circumvent that by using this Junction Bot, which can group multiple channels into one single feed, tricking Telegram to think that they are only one channel. There is no theoretical upper limit of how many people can join a channel.
- Bots and programmability: Official Telegram API Documentation. Third-party Telegram Bot Guide. Popular JavaScript Framework for Telegram Bot. There are lots of resources out there on how to create your own Telegram bots, accessible in English.
- Usage: Private chat, joining Telegram channels which have a group like features. Most popular app for the crypto community worldwide. Crypto friendly, recently issued its own cryptocurrency named TON or Gram.
- Encryption and privacy: Official privacy policy. Optional end-to-end encrypted messages, messages are not encrypted by default raising controversy. More discussions about their encryption, security and privacy here.
Description
Since the popularity of cryptocurrency rose rapidly in 2017, Telegram has become the de facto go-to app for joining the communities created by blockchain projects. Popular groups focus on pre-ICO hypes and market sentiments to attract retail and inexperienced investors. There are several reasons why Telegram is widely used particularly for the crypto world. One reason is that it is perceived to be more private. If communicating parties use end-to-end encryption, there is complete privacy, which means that governments or third-parties cannot access the information being exchanged. This is especially useful in censorship-strong countries.
Telegram is supported on multiple platforms such as desktop computers, web and mobile phones which makes community management efficient.
The Telegram channels can have an unlimited number of users, as compared to WeChat, which allows for rapid dissemination of news and broadcasting information. Some rating agencies have used the number of members in Telegram channels as a key metric for evaluating the popularity of projects in the crypto community.
Telegram is also dedicated to allowing developers to create custom chatbots using their API. This has led to a number of useful bots that allow a easy-to-use management of a Telegram channel.
Most of the airdrops that we have seen in the crypto space happen on Telegram and would most likely to continue so. The problem with Telegram is that it is easy to buy fake members. Its programmable features have become a double-edged sword. Users can be added into groups without their prior consent which makes it easy for scammy projects to pump up their community member size artificially. Some of the users are there primarily for the airdrops and would likely leave if the project has no more airdrops.
Compared to other chat apps, Telegram also has the ultimate say for arbitration after a flag. For example, your account can get banned for suspicious activities, same goes for channels that you created. But you can file an appeal and explain why you think that the ban was unjustified.
We have observed that some of the channels, which used bots to add too many members very quickly and without their prior consent, have been banned. It is yet unsure if competitors of a channel can use this tactic to attack a legit group. We have not heard of such a case, but it looks like that it is technically feasible. In any case, this might be a sign that Telegram, as with WeChat, is actively involved in regulating its own users’ activities.
Line
Key Characteristics
- Official Homepage
- Country of origin: Japan
- Controlling owner: Naver Corporation (South Korea)
- Available languages: over 17 languages including Japanese, Korean, and English
- Users: 75 million MAU in Japan, 217 million MAU worldwide.
- Limitations: You can now add up to 499 users in a Line group chat. You cannot discover group chats publicly. You have to be invited to a group chat to get access.
- Bots and programmability: Official Line API Documentation. Third-party Line Bot Guide. Node SDK.
- Usage: Private messaging amongst friends, group chats for crypto are out there. Group calls for a large number of attendants.
- Encryption and privacy: Official privacy policy. Official report on Line’s encryption status. Some online discussions about the security of Line.
Description
The most popular chat app in Japan, Line conquered its territory in a lot of South East Asian countries including Thailand, Taiwan and Indonesia. In Japan. Line has a monopoly position just as WeChat for China.
Instead of only focusing on messaging features, Line is differentiating itself from its competitors with features such as sticker customisation, integration of music services, microservices and taxi hailing.
There are two features that can be used to build a community on Line. The first one is their Official Account, the second is a Line group chat. The Official Account on Line is similar to WeChat Official Account or Facebook Page but with different features. On Line’s Official Accounts you can broadcast publicly your news, photos, videos, blog articles to your followers. As a user, you can find Official Accounts directly in Line using the search feature. Once found, you can follow them. Within the account, you can share the posts, react to them with emojis and stickers, leave comments and interact and communicate with the content creators.
This is an example Home of the Official Account of Bitbox, which is the newly created crypto exchange by Line itself where you can get their own cryptocurrency, LINK. It indicates that Line may indeed crypto friendly.
The general way to grow a Line Official Account is to offer discounts, coupons, gifts, anything that directly benefits the user. When the users start to come into the account, the owner would publish information and posts that would be valuable to the followers. Any follower can ask questions within the account but it is only visible between the account owner or admin and the follower.
Use cases for the Line Official Account include entry/exit signal for crypto traders, airdrop campaigns, ICO pre-sale information etc.
The other way to engage with a community on Line is by creating a group chat. You can simply start with adding your existing friends to the chat. As an example, let us have a deeper dive into an existing crypto group, Project PAI公式グループ.
You can pin announcement posts on the top of the group chat. You see the number of members in the chat. You can make a group call to members, up to 200 at any one time. Texting, voice and attachment of different media formats are also allowed.
There are numerous features particularly related to a group chat. You can search for data within the group, invite new members, mute, make notes and submit media.
The general idea is to make a public announcement and press releases on an Official Account and then direct users who want to chat with each other to your group chat.
The group chat in Line comes with several caveats. When you create a group chat, anyone can kick anyone out. This means that if someone just joined, that person can even kick the initial creator of the group. Anyone in the group can change the name of the group. There is always a public text showing who did what action within the group so you everyone knows who kicked who and who changed the group’s name at that time.
As of the time of writing, when you search “blockchain” within the Official Accounts registry, there is no account at all. If you search for “crypto”, you see three accounts including that of Bitbox. When you search for “bitcoin” there are two accounts such as the one mentioned above as an example, Bitcoin Center TH, and Lanna Mining. But the scarce number of crypto-related accounts could also be due to the limitation of their search feature.
Discord
Key Characteristics
- Official Homepage
- Country of origin: USA
- Controlling owner: Hammer & Chisel
- Available languages: over 27 languages including English and Japanese
- Users: over 150 million registered users worldwide
- Limitations: Individual accounts can join up to 100 servers at the same time. There is no theoretical member limit per server but the limit for simultaneous online users is 5000. After that, the support team of Discord must be contacted. For more details on the server limitations please consult here.
- Bots and programmability: Official Discord API Documentation. Third-party Discord Bot Guide. Popular JavaScript Framework for Discord Bot. Discord is by far one of the best platforms to program your own chatbot. The official documentation on their API as well as documentation on publicly available frameworks is extensive and well-written. You can program in JavaScript, Python and many other languages.
- Usage: Chat with a community on a server. Private chats. Popular for gamers. Rising popularity amongst Asian crypto community.
- Encryption and privacy: Official privacy policy. It is not yet end-to-end encrypted. Some online discussions about their security.
Description
Discord gained popularity amongst the gaming community due to its clean and attractive interface that shares a similar design and layout as Slack. It has also become increasingly popular among the crypto community in Asia.
In Japan, Discord is famous for a certain kind of airdrop campaign referred to as “rain”. It is more specific and popular for crypto projects and that is the reason why Madginger.io a blockchain consultancy firm I work at, chose this application instead of Line for our Japanese community.
Discord has the added bonus that you can create a server instead of a single channel. You first have a top-level server, within which you can create multiple channels based on different topics. You can invite specific people into each channel, make it private, change it to a voice channel instead of a text channel etc. There are generally much more functions and features in Discord as compared to Telegram and many other popular chat apps.
As a demonstration of the programmability of a Discord server, let us go through the user flow when you join the Discord server of district0x, a project that provides a decentralised marketplace to build and run custom-made, blockchain-based applications.
- First go to this Discord server: https://discord.gg/ZYrpxR9
- Once you joined them, you will see a private message from the MEE6 bot with instructions on the further steps you are required to do.
- After reading the announcement, you click on e.g. the British flag to select English as your language. This will unlock the #rules channel.
- After reading the rules, you click on the checkbox to agree, which in turn unlocks the #general channel. Note that both the rules and general channels are private. That is why you initially cannot see them on the server.
- After that, you are free to say Hi to the other members of the #general channel.
All of that is done by a combination of Discord bots such as the MEE6 bot. For more detailed features you have to either pay for premium services or write your own bot.
Discord has one of the best API for creating custom chatbots. This platform has a great variety of frameworks using JavaScript and Node.js. We would recommend using the discord.js framework and Node.js to create your chatbot on Discord. You can have an example here that can list all members of your server with a single command.
Discord used to be a place for gamers where KOLs of games would interact with their followers. But recently, there is a surge in crypto enthusiasts joining Discord as a means to enter the community of blockchain projects they follow. It also has become increasingly popular for airdrop campaigns, especially in Japan.
If you are interested in the range of available public bots on Discord, here is a list of the most popular ones: https://discordbots.org/list/top
Some of the best bots include MEE6, Statbot, InviteManager, YAGPDB and Dyno.
At Madginger, we interviewed the founder of digix, who said that their Discord community was where they found their organic following. The users stayed and engaged with them even if there was no airdrop. Furthermore, Discord bots, such as the InviteManager, can track fake members invites.
In our opinion, Discord is for people who have a more genuine interest in blockchain projects and the quality of members’ conversations is good. The management of a Discord server is also highly customisable and versatile.
Kakaotalk
Key Characteristics
- Official Homepage
- Country of origin: South Korea
- Controlling owner: Kakao M.
- Available languages: Korean, English and 13 other languages
- Users: 49 million MAU. 93% of smartphone users have Kakaotalk installed.
- Limitations: No theoretical limit for a group chat.
- Bots and programmability: Official Kakaotalk API. Third-party Kakaotalk Bot Guide. List of Github hosted public Kakaotalk bots. The difficulty in coding a bot for Kakaotalk is that the English-speaking developer community and resources are scarce as compared to the Korean-speaking ones. If you speak Korean, it is easier to code on Kakaotalk.
- Usage: Number 1 messaging app in South Korea. Private chat, group chats, crypto related chats.
- Encryption and privacy: Official privacy policy. End-to-end encryption is enabled for their Secret Chat. The default is not encrypted this way.
Description
Kakaotalk, or simply Kakao, is the monopoly app for messaging in South Korea. You need Kakao to be able to get along there and make contacts because pretty much everyone with a smartphone has this app. Like Line, Kakao pushes calls directly and more pervasively to your smartphone than other chat apps. If you call on Kakao, the pervasiveness of notification on your mobile is pretty much the same as for an ordinary phone call.
When you create a chat in Kakao you have the option of a regular chat, secret chat and open chat. Open chat is similar to a group chat in other messaging apps with the added bonus that you can make the setting to be searchable publicly. This means that others can search your open chat by your tag or name of the chat. You can set the chat to be accessible by anyone or only with a passcode. When you create your own open chat, you have the option of making a 1:1 chat or a group chat. 1:1 chat is there for private conversations where you can sell products or services to individual customers. Group chat is there to engage with your community. You can also create a public profile so people can see who you are, where your office is etc. It is like a LinkedIn profile but for the Kakao community.
Let us have a look at an open group chat on Kakao for cryptos.
As with Line, Kakao has not yet become mainstream for the crypto community but it is certain that there are group chats discussing blockchain related subjects.
Kakao is essential for the Korean market but it lacks the finely tuned functionalities of Discord or the global reach of Telegram.
A typical user flow would be to funnel general users to your Telegram/Discord community first and then establish a chat on Kakao specifically for Korean speakers.
In the next section, we go through the South Korean search engine, Naver, and their services needed to grow a following.
Naver
Key Characteristics
- Official Homepage
- Country of origin: South Korea
- Controlling owner: Naver Corporation
- Available languages: Web only in Korean, you need to use Google Translate to translate the website’s content if you do not speak Korean. There are three relevant apps: Naver, Naver Cafe and Naver Blog. The first one is for the search and the other two are for their additional services.
- Users: 42 million registered users covering more than 70% of all web searches in South Korea.
- Limitations: Only available in Korean and it is clumsy to translate them into other languages. Hardly useful for anywhere outside Korea.
- Bots and programmability: Official Naver API Documentation, Third-party Coding Guide. Example Codes. Scarce resources in English, mostly in Korean.
- Usage: Search, online discussions and public chats, blogging, interactions between followers and bloggers.
- Encryption and privacy: Official privacy policy.
Description
For the South Korean community, you will heavily rely on Naver, which is the South Korean equivalent to Google. It is a must-have tool to promote your project and Naver provides different ways to help you.
When people search for “ICO projects” or “blockchain projects” on Naver Search, you wish to improve your SEO ranking on their platform. This can be done by posting valuable content regularly such as blog articles and videos.
As part of Naver’s services, Naver Blog is a blogging platform where you can submit your blog articles. There are close to 23 million Naver blogs with hundreds of thousands of new content generated daily. You can manage your own blog articles there and engage with your followers.
When you create your blog on Naver, you can also customise the design and layout. Take a look at a few examples here:
Another service provided by Naver is Naver Café, a user-generated content platform that brings together members with a common interest to share their knowledge with each other and to engage in discussions on a particular topic. There are more than 10 million Naver Cafes by now. It is the South Korean equivalent to Reddit. Each Naver Café section acts like a subreddit with its niche focus and community.
Here is one example of a Naver Cafe for Bitcoin.
The tools provided by Naver together with Kaokao would be most vital to growing your community in South Korea and around those who speak Korean. One strategy would be to translate your content into Korean and republish them on a Naver blog, direct users in each post at the end to your Naver Cafe and share the invitation link to your Kakaotalk group chat. People interested in your project would first read about you and then engage with you in on Kakao or Naver Cafe.
Conclusion
If your project is based in the English-speaking world or more generally in a non-Asian country and you wish to grow an organic community in Asia, you need to start using localised messaging apps to engage with the local communities. This article here presented some of the most popular and useful apps and their features.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article. We hope that we could point out the messaging app that is most useful to you.
About MadGinger
We are a group of creative thinkers and experienced marketers who are deeply rooted in both the Asian and global blockchain community. We specialise in formulating marketing strategies tailored and adapted to suit localised context to build a strong community around your brand. If you would like to expand and reach Asian markets for your project, please feel free to contact us directly via email at info@madginger.io
Website: madginger.io
