Today Haansoft's application software, available on the Internet, is the major hub for Korean chat rooms, game playing, e-commerce, messaging and services aimed at the booming PC-room market.
While Alibaba and Tencent already compete in e-commerce, messaging, and big data, the financial sector is a relatively new battleground for the two companies.
The apps browser lets them pick from a selection of tools like Buffer and Sendible for scheduling posts to their Group, and others for handling commerce messages.
"We want to bring commerce and messaging together in a way that is user-first".
The company wanted to create something akin to Path or Line, which would incorporate gaming, commerce and messaging into a social platform.
I have a lot of hope now that what I call "conversational commerce" — interactions via messaging, voice (Alexa and so on) and bots — will finally deliver on the promise of powering digital commerce at the scale we all dreamt about.
Conversational commerce enabled by messaging platforms is rapidly becoming the marketing channel of choice in China, where customers are communicating directly with retailers and brands via WeChat.
Solutions include content management, messaging, commerce, logistics, workflow, and internet based administrative tools that can integrate into property management (PMS), central reservation (CRS) and point of sale (POS) systems.
Chudnovsky admits that when it comes to building extra features like location or commerce into Messaging, "in Asia they figured it out".
Regardless of whether or not this idea of mixing commerce and messaging actually takes off, it seems like that's not the only thing Path has up its sleeve.
GGV Capital China Partner Jenny Lee thinks in terms of horizontal platforms (e.g. search, messaging, e-commerce), and the verticals that leverage them (e.g. travel, HR, games).
