Alibaba’s Rivals Merge E-Commerce with Mobile and Social | MIT Technology Review
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/news/527201/alibabas-big-rivals-may-have-a-mobile-edge
Many of the Internet companies in China defy the common claim that they are clones of leading United States companies such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Amazon. “Because of the hyper-competitive local environment, they are actually innovating beyond what has proven successful in [Silicon] Valley,” says Aaron Du, founder of Meijicard, a Chinese merchant reward startup. “There are a lot of feature innovations that are fundamentally unique to the Chinese Internet, and we will likely see more of that over the next decade. A few years from now, it would not be surprising to see the new Facebook Whatsapp looking a lot like Wechat today.”