[UA-discuss] Maybe email addresses and URLs might not matter anymore?

[John Levine]

In article <017c01d6655d$054525f0$0fcf71d0$@acm.org> you write:
>John Levine wrote:
>
>> China is a very large special case, because literally everyone in China has a
>> Wechat acccount and that's their online identity. Statista says they have 1.2
>> billion active users.
>> 
>> To the extent they use e-mail, it's to communicate with people in other
>> countries.
>
>Using EAI email addresses not so important then?

Not in China. We talked to Tencent about a year and a half ago, and
learned that the way most people type Chinese into their computers is
ASCII pinyin so they know the ASCII alphabet even if they don't speak
English. E-mail addresses are often either the pinyin or their numeric
account ID at whatever service hosts the mail.  Tencent will probably
support EAI but not due to command from their own customers.

If someone has an unusual name written with an uncommon character,
when he says what his name is he often wiill draw the character in the
air with his finger which doesn't help if you can't see him. The
pinyin comes directly from the sound of the name so it's a better mail
identifier than the uncommon character.

R's,
John