Chinese Internet: A Brief Overview of Near-Social Services

The post is a significant revision of The Complete Guide to China's Major Social Media Networks article with my edits, comments, and some illustrations. And he added the correct Russian reading of Chinese services.

On April 17, 2014, the Chinese counterpart of Twitter, Sina Weibo, went public on the US stock exchange. Thanks to the IPO, the company attracted less than expected, but this is certainly a great success for Chinese social media resources. Therefore, it is worthwhile to make a short review of the existing Chinese social Internet resources. Of course, he does not claim to be completely complete and objective, so feel free to write your additions and comments.

The platforms and services that will be discussed have both a desktop and a mobile client, unless expressly stated otherwise.
It should also be remembered that many foreign resources - such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and partially Wikipedia - are blocked in China , so local residents use Chinese counterparts, often not knowing about the originals. In addition, everywhere there are lists of "bad words" (mostly bad politically), the entry of which is blocked, or the activity of such users is carefully monitored. By China, of course, we will mean its mainland, not counting Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, where the censorship of the Communist Party does not work.

Social Media Categories

There are different categorizations of social services. Here we will analyze them so as to draw an analogy with Western services.
Of course, each service, in addition to the main functionality, also has many side features, so for categorization we focus only on the main purpose of a site / application.

Messaging (IM)

Mobile networks

Music Video

Blog Platforms

Microblogging

Social networks

Forums

Reviews and Reviews

Electronic commerce

Travel sites

Dating

Business network

Light Blogging

Sharing photos and pictures

Video sharing

Encyclopedic sites

Social Shopping

Messaging (IM)

It is difficult to clearly categorize IM services because of their rapid growth, aimed only at mobile users. Here we will try to break down purely mobile services and universal networks. As a "reference" service, we take Twitter (a controversial moment).

QQ IM [ Cue ] - www.imqq.com



Tencent QQ is the main and most famous (hereinafter in China, of course) messaging service. It was originally a desktop text messaging platform. In the future, she overgrown with functionality (similar to the familiar ICQ) and went to mobile phones. With it, you can not only exchange messages, but also plan events, make video and audio calls (including group calls), listen to music, play games. There is even its own payment system for games and services -QQ Coins , as well as a microblogging service (only people who you explicitly allow this to read posts). It is also worth noting that third-party clients do not exist, the protocol is closed, and directly from the application interface you can complain about spammers or persons engaged in propaganda.

At the beginning of 2013, QQ (desktop and mobile versions) totaled 200 million active users with 623 million registered accounts.

Feixin 飞 信 [Feixin] - www.webim.feixin.10086.cn
Feixin - a platform from the operator China Mobile (you can draw an analogy with the VoIP messenger from Megaphone, for example). It appeared on the market earlier than WeChat (a mobile application from the same company Tencent), but could not gain popularity of the latter. This service for 2013 has a 100 millionth monthly audience, although it is not used very actively.

Aliwangwang 阿里 旺旺 [Ali Wang Wang] im.alisoft.com
This is a messenger for the Taobao trading platform. Used for communication between sellers and buyers. In China, it is customary to communicate with the seller before buying goods (you can bargain for free delivery, or get a discount), and sellers like to duplicate notifications and send advertisements to old buyers through private messages, so they use the service quite actively.

Baidu Hi 百度 Hi [Baidu Hai] im.baidu.com /
Of course, the largest search service in China also has its own messenger. This is not the most popular means of communication, but it reflects the giant’s desire to strengthen its presence in all major Internet areas.
Mobile networks

Mobile networks (WatsApp analogues)

WeChat 微 信 [weixin], [Weixin] www.wechat.com



This is Tencent's fastest growing platform. Today, the monthly audience of active users totals about 355 million, while about 100 million are registered outside of China. In addition to sending messages, voice and video communications (including the “Internet walkie-talkie mode”), the application can install games (and share results with friends a la Google Play Games), it has a built-in Instagram like (called 朋友 圈- “Circle of friends” for sharing photos), allows you to join communities or subscribe to company updates (QR codes of communities are posted everywhere). The application itself is free, has built-in purchases - for example, emoticon sets are sold.

Yixin 易 信 [Y-Xin] yixin.im
China mobile is also fighting for this niche together with NetEase. The difference from WeChat is that the application user can send text messages not only to the same users, but also to any cell phone number.

Momo 陌 陌 [Mo-mo] www.immomo.com
This is a purely mobile application that is positioned as a means for finding friends, in fact being something like a dating site (for a known purpose). The app uses geolocation to search for other users around and send messages.

Laiwang 来往 [Lai Wang] www.laiwang.com
This is an messenger from the Alibaba group of companies - with the help of it the company is trying to enter the market of mobile messaging systems. Today it lags behind WeChat (the main competitor) in terms of the number of users and the volume of built-in services.

Music Video

Services for streaming video and listening to music are very popular in China. There are several YouTube counterparts that make good money on pretty intrusive ads.
Chinese users do not feel completely deprived of the lack of YouTube, and on every corner you can meet people who watch videos and TV shows from their mobile devices and computers.

Youku 优 酷 [Yuku] www.youku.com and Tudou 土豆 [Tudou] www.tudou.com
These two services are the most popular in China. Since 2012, both platforms are owned by Youku. The interface is largely copying YouTube.

Users have the ability to upload videos of arbitrary length and share with friends. The portals have partnership agreements with most copyright holders in China, so they regularly post fresh content on their pages.
True, one cannot help but make a reservation: there is very strict censorship of political topics, so all content is constantly moderated (both automatically - with a list of "bad" words, and manually). The same applies, in principle, to all other Chinese services.

Sohu 搜狐 视频 [Sohu] tv.sohu.com



A similar service, also very popular in mainland China. Even the icon design copies Youtube.

Xiami 虾米 [Sami] www.xiami.com (not to be confused with Xiaomi - the manufacturer of phones)
Alibaba's music service introduced in 2013. A very popular music venue among young people.

PPTV - www.pptv.com Well-



known p2p-application for watching videos. The repertoire is practically unlimited - starting from Korean series (extremely popular in China), ending with the latest Hollywood (licensing of content is a separate issue).

Blog Platforms

In China, there are many copies of Google's Blogger (completely blocked in China).

Blogbus - www.blogbus.com



Well-known paid blogging platform.

36kr 36 氪 (Krypton) www.36kr.com A
platform for exchanging information on startups. It is here that young entrepreneurs receive information on the latest trends in the IT field.

SocialBeta - www.socialbeta.com

This platform is copying mashable.com for some reason. Here you can find a lot of information on social services and IT.

Sohu blog 搜狐 博客 [Sohu Boke] www.blog.sohu.com

Blogs on the Sohu platform are well-known among Chinese Internet users .

Sina blog 新浪 博客 [Xinlan Boke] blog.sina.com.cn
Well, the most popular blogging platform is Sina Weibo.

Microblogging

Twitter micro-blogging is incredibly popular in China. Of course, there are some differences here, for example, for the Chinese, a limit of 140 characters is not such a problem, since much larger information can be fit into this volume with the help of hieroglyphs than in alphabetic languages.

Sina Weibo 新浪 微 博 [Sina Weibo] or [Xinlan Weibo] www.weibo.com
Sina became a public company on April 17, 2014. Her most famous service is Sina Weibo, an analogue of Twitter. About 100 million entries are published daily in the service. It is believed that Weibo may lose ground with the advent of WeChat, however, it should be borne in mind that almost all active users of the Chinese network have an account on Weibo, and it is too early to debit it.

Tencent Weibo 腾讯 微 博 [Tengxun Weibo]reg.t.qq.com
A similar service from Tencent, which is much inferior in the audience to its competitor from Sina.

Sohu Weibo 搜狐 微 博 [Sohu Weibo] t.sohu.com
Another microblogging service from a major Sohu search engine. In popularity, it also lags behind competitors in the market.

NetEase Weibo 网易 微 博 [Wang Yi Weibo] t.163.com Microblogging
platform from the popular Chinese resource 163.com

Social networks

Social networks - analogues of Facebook, Vkontakte, etc. The first one in China has been blocked since 2008, then similar Chinese services got an impetus in development.

QZone (QQ 空间) qzone.qq.com
The QQ Zone network is part of Tencent's services. If you have an account in QQ IM, you can use the network immediately. There are groups, built-in microblogging, photo albums, the ability to listen to music and watch videos.

Renren 人人 网 [Ren-Ren Wang] (“a network of many people”) www.renren.com



Renren - like Vkontakte, started by copying Facebook. True, unlike the domestic service, in many ways copying (with Chinese characteristics) continues to this day.

The service also helps in finding friends at the place of residence, study or work. Of the features, it should be noted that the network positions itself as a “social network with real names,” and since the target audience is residents of the PRC, registration is possible only with a hieroglyphic name (and no longer than ordinary Chinese names - transcription of a long Russian name like 弗拉基米尔, for example, the system will not accept), and only the Chinese provinces are listed in the "place of birth" section.
Today, the popularity of the network is declining, but the audience is still about 194 million people, of which a third visits the network from mobile phones. The main audience is schoolchildren and students who, after graduation, go to other networks.

Pengyou 朋友 网 [Pengyu Wang] ("network of friends") www.pengyou.com
Pengyou is another popular Chinese social network. Today, the audience is about 200 million users, the emphasis is also on real names and on adding real friends. Like Facebook, users can subscribe to company pages.

Kaixin001 开心 网 [Kaisin-wan] (the “network of happiness”) www.kaixin001.com
Kaixin 001 is owned by Renak, Oak Pacific Interactive. The success of the network is not least due to the copying of flash games from Facebook, due to which the reputation of the playground has been attached to the network.

Forums

Forums (which in China are called exclusively “BBS”) are very popular.

Tianya 天涯 [Tian-ya] ("End of the World") www.tianya.cn/bbs
This forum provides BBS services, a blog platform, microblogging, photo and video exchange platform. The forum is one of the most popular in mainland China, even political figures and officials have resorted to it.

Liba 篱笆 网 [Liba-van] www.liba.com and KDSlife www.kdslife.com
These two forums are aimed at Shanghai audiences - the events of the city are covered here, local residents communicate.

Autohome 汽车 之 家 - www.autohome.com.cn
As the name implies, the forum is dedicated to automotive topics. Photos on auto topics, announcements of buying or selling, news from the world of the automotive industry are published.

Maopu 猫 扑 [Maopu-wan] www.mop.com
Mop.com is one of the most popular Chinese forums. Known as an interactive music portal, as well as the local homeland of memes and Internet slang (compare with Leprosy).

Baidu tieba 百度 贴 吧 [Baidu teba] tieba.baidu.com
Part of Baidu search service. It is an online community for discussing certain issues (there is a certain similarity with Mail.ru Answers).

Reviews and Reviews

Chinese consumers are quite active in leaving comments about certain goods and services. The following are the services that allow you to leave such reviews and share with other users.

Dazhong Dianping 大众 点评 [Dazhong Dianping] www.dianping.com/citylist
This service helps in finding restaurants, bars, shops, fitness centers and other facilities. Here, users can rate places and leave their impressions of the visit. You can search through the choice of city and category, or through the usual search field.

Douban 豆瓣 [Douban] www.douban.com
Douban started as a review service for books, films and music in 2005 (the analogues we know are Imhonet, kinopoisk). Today, the service has become a very popular social network. Most popular among the educated urban population (students and white-collar workers). As of 2013, the number of registered users is about 72 million with 200 million monthly traffic.

A noticeable difference from other social networks is that it is not necessary to have an account to use its resources. In other words, ratings of films, books and music are available for ordinary visitors, and after registration recommendations and social functions become available.

Gewara 格瓦拉 生活 [Gavala Shenho] ​​or [Guevara Life] www.gewara.com

In addition to ratings and ratings, the platform allows you to book tickets for cultural and sports events (concerts, championships), as well as movie tickets. Yes, the site is called Guevara, without Che, but about him .

Douban movie 豆瓣 视频 [Douban Shipin] movie.douban.com A
service from Douban for movies (the functionality is similar to Guevara).

Xiachufang 下 厨房 [Syachufang] ("cooking in the kitchen") www.xiachufang.com A
site dedicated to cooking. Recipes, tips, product information are all here. There is both a desktop and a mobile version. To the credit of the creators of the portal, the interface for the Chinese Internet looks clean and concise.The author of the original article says that the site will help avoid eating rats in a Chinese eatery, because with it you can cook at home. Given the monolingualism of the portal, for a foreigner this is a dubious advice.

Jiepang 街旁 [Jie-pan] ("street") jiepang.com
Jiepang copies the functionality of Foursquare - you can check in and share with friends, create interest groups. The mobile application is present on iOS and Android.

Liuliu 遛遛 [Liu-lu] (“walk”) liuliu.co
This is a recently launched mobile (iOS) social network for pet owners - love dogs and kittens share photos of their pets, can organize joint walks, as well as search for them new owners or partners for mating (no matter how funny it may sound).

M-time 时光 网 [Shiguang-wan] www.mtime.com Movie
review portal, an analogue of IMBD blocked in China.

E-commerce

Online shopping in China is incredibly popular. At least 300 million people make online purchases, with a total of 618 million users. The largest player in this market is Alibaba, but it also has competitors.

Taobao 淘宝网taobao.com

Well-known Taobao - the largest trading platform in the likeness of eBay, belongs to Alibaba. Both large companies (mainly on the special section of Tmall.com) and private individuals act as sellers - the threshold for Chinese entry into this business is quite low, which, however, is accompanied by extreme competition. An important role in the popularity and accessibility of online shopping is played by an over-developed network of fast delivery services - low prices for deliveries in the country plus high speed of order execution. A payment system has also been correctly built, in which the seller receives money for the goods only after confirming receipt from the buyer - until that moment, the Alipay payment system holds the money.

Jingdong 京东 [Jingdong] JD.com



JD.com (formerly 360Buy) is the second most popular platform after Taobao. First of all, it is a B2C platform with well-functioning logistics. The interfaces of all such sites in China are similar to the point of confusion, compare with Taobao.

Dazhong Dianping 大众 点评 [Dazhong Dianping] www.dianping.com/citylist
In addition to the rating and feedback system mentioned above, the portal has electronic commerce elements and coupon sales.

Jumeiyoupin 聚 美 优 品 [Jumei Yupin] bj.jumei.com
Portal for popular in China collective purchases and distribution of coupons, an analog of Groupon and Kupikupon. The main product is cosmetics.

Meituan 美 团 [Meituan] bj.meituan.com
A recommendation and evaluation service for catering establishments - restaurants, canteens, bars, etc., provides information on discounts and promotions.

Suning 苏宁 易 购 [Sunin] www.suning.com

Suning is a large chain of electronics stores that has also acquired the opportunity to purchase goods online.

Travel sites

The middle class in China is slowly but surely moving away from group tours to individual planning. This led to the emergence of a la TripAdvisor sites.

Qunar 去 哪儿 [Quinar] ("where are we going?") Qunar.com
A very well-known complex portal in China that provides services for finding tickets (air, train), hotel reservations, purchase of entrance tickets to tourist or entertainment complexes, etc. Audience - about 75 million visits per month (according to 2013 data)

Ctrip 携程 [Sechen] ctrip.com
A large, now international portal on which you can buy air and train tickets, book a hotel and other related services. In addition to Chinese, the site fully works in Russian, English and the main European and Asian languages. Now the company employs about 20 thousand people. Audience - about 60 million registered users.

Qiongyou 穷 Ц [Qionyun] www.qyer.com
The Travel Forum has grown to become a large portal with a large number of opportunities for travelers planning, including the possibility of booking tickets and searching for hotels. The site has a fairly developed community that actively shares tips and tricks.

Mafengwo 蚂 蜂窝 [Mafengwo] www.mafengwo.cn
Service for travelers, numbering more than a million guides from the users themselves. The site contains information about places, flights, insurance and everything related to tourism.

Lǘpingwang 驴 评 网 [Luping-wan] www.lvping.com
The portal calls itself a “personal guide.” You can find tickets, hotels and other services on it (but the purchase itself takes place on the partners sites).

Baidu travel 百度 ​​旅游 [Baidu Liu-yu] lvyou.baidu.com
Travel site from the search giant Baidu.

Dating

The sites and platforms below can vary significantly, but they all share a common purpose: meeting new people.

Jiayuan 世纪 佳 缘 [Jiayuan] www.jiayuan.com
Jiayuan is the largest online dating service. It is positioned as a “pandering” site that creates couples, so relationships “at once” are not welcome here. The company is present at NASDAQ.

Baihe 百合 [Baihe] www.baihe.com and Zhenai 珍爱 网 [Zhenyai-wan] www.zhenai.com are similar sites.

Momo 陌 陌 [Mo-mo] www.immomo.com A
mobile application to search for new friends nearby. Very popular with expats in China and with Chinese students.

Business network

Resumes, job advertisements, headhunting, work dating - all in all, LinkedIn-like services.

Dajiewang 大街 网 [Dajie-wan] www.dajie.com
A large network for finding work, posting resumes and vacancies. The main audience is students and recent graduates. In addition to work, here you can find companies for practical training. There are communities like LinkedIn.

Jingwei 经纬 实业 [Jingwei] mobile.jingwei.com
Also, the analogue of LinkedIn from the creators of the social network RenRenWang, is focused on mobile use.

Easy blogging

Easy blogging is an intermediate between full-blown blogging platforms and microblogging. Popular with creative youth.

Qing 轻 [Qing] ("light, light") qing.blog.sina.com.cn
Qing is a light hipster blogging service from Sina. In terms of integration with other services, it is somewhat similar to Ya.ru.

Renren Xiaozhan 人人 小站 [Renzhen Xiaozhan] zhan.renren.com
The platform from the creators of the RenRenWang social network - aims to expand RenRen's presence in various fields of activity. The target audience is office workers.

Wuming Xiaozhan 无名 小站 [Umin-xiaozhan] (“nameless stop”) www.xiaozhan.cc
A kind of blogging service aimed at fans of popular anime series (such as One Piece, Naruto, etc.). The content of the blog is appropriate.

Diandian 点点 网 [Diandyan] www.diandian.com
A blog platform where the main, but not the only content is pictures. Close to Tumblr, which is blocked in China.

Sharing photos and pictures

The exchange of photographs and pictures is not fundamentally different from Western services - instagram-like services are undergoing rapid development. Some of these platforms have common features with easy blogging.

Huaban 花瓣 [Huaban] huaban.com and Duitang 堆 糖 [Duytan] www.duitang.com Picture sharing
services a la Pinterest.

Papa 啪啪 [Pa-pa] papa.me
A hybrid of Instagram and a mobile messenger with Chinese characteristics.

Video sharing

Weishi 微 视 [Weishi] ("microvideo") weishi.com The

full analogue of Vine, the owner is Tencent, an exclusively mobile application. You can record videos up to 8 seconds and share with friends.

Encyclopedic sites

For us, this is Wikipedia, but in China (where it is partially banned) there are many of its local resources.

Baidu zhidao 百度 知道 [Baidu Zhidao] ("Baidu Know") zhidao.baidu.com
The most popular online encyclopedia. Integrated with a search service, and, like Wikipedia, replenished by users. True, the editors are, among other things, Chinese censors.

Guoke 果壳 [Goke] www.guokr.com
Specializes in science and technology articles. Popular among students. It works on the principle of "question and answer", which makes the site related to Google. Answers and special.

Zhihu 知 乎 [Zhi-hu] ("Do you know?") Www.zhihu.com
Similar to Quora, but with a focus on answers, not discussions. At the end of 2013, the audience totaled about 10 million active users.

Aiwen 爱 问 网 [Aivan-wan] (sometimes “iAsk”) www.ai-wen.net
A simple Q & A service from Sina.

Social Shopping

The platforms listed below are a cross between product review sites and online stores. You can call it "shops with elements of social networks."
It is very popular among women with average incomes. On such sites there are communities where users help each other choose products, and the lots themselves come from a store supporter (Taobao, JD, etc.). When choosing a product, the buyer goes to the store website.
These portals earn on advertising, as well as on commission payments of sellers themselves.

Meilishuo 美丽 说 [Mailo-sho] www.meilishuo.com
Mogujie 蘑菇 街 [Mogu-jie] ("mushroom street") www.mogujie.com
Dongxi 东西 文库 [Dongxi-wenku] dongxi.net
Guoku 果 库 [Goku] www .guoku.com / selected
All these portals are similar to fancy.com or ru.itao.com - they allow you to search for interesting products, share with friends, give ratings, and, ultimately, buy.

Weitao 微 淘 [Weitao] we.taobao.com
It’s just a mobile version of Taobao with good functionality (including searching for goods by barcode).

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Of course, new sites and services appear every day, others lose popularity, and the Chinese Internet - an absolutely immense thing in which half a billion users circulate - you will not list in all. Be sure to write in the comments if you have something to add (or if you notice a funny site name).