Chinese Internet: a brief overview of near-social services

The post is a significant revision of the Major Social Media Networks article with my edits, comments and some illustrations. And also added the correct Russian reading of Chinese services.

On April 17, 2014, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, Sina Weibo, was listed on the American Stock Exchange. Thanks to the IPO, the company attracted less than expected, but this is certainly a great success of Chinese social media resources. Therefore, it is worth making a small overview of the existing Chinese social Internet resources. Of course, he does not claim absolute completeness and objectivity, so feel free to write your additions and comments.
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Platforms and services, which will be discussed, have both a desktop and a mobile client, unless otherwise specified.
It should also be remembered that many foreign resources, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and partly Wikipedia, are blocked in the PRC ; therefore, local residents use their Chinese counterparts, often not knowing about the existence of the originals. In addition, everywhere there are lists of “bad words” (mostly bad politically), input of which is blocked, or the activity of such users is carefully monitored. By China, of course, we will have in mind its mainland, not counting Hong Kong, Macao 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, has many side capabilities, so for categorization we will focus only on the main purpose of this or that site / application.

Messaging (IM)

Mobile networks

Music Video

Blog platforms

Microblogging

Social networks

Forums

Reviews and Reviews

Electronic commerce

Tourist sites

Dating

Business network

Light Blogging

Share photos and pictures

Video sharing

Encyclopedic sites

"Social Shopping"

Messaging (IM)

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

QQ IM [ Q - Q ] - www.imqq.com



Tencent QQ is the main and most famous (hereinafter, in China, of course) messaging service. Initially it was a desktop text messaging platform. In the future, it acquired functionality (similar to 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 it can read posts). It is also worth noting that there are no third-party clients, the protocol is closed, and directly from the application interface you can complain about spammers or propaganda personalities.

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

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

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

Baidu Hi 百度 Hi [Baidu Hi] 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 desire of the giant to strengthen its presence in all major Internet areas.
Mobile networks

Mobile networks (analog WatsApp)

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



This is the most dynamic platform of Tencent. At present, the monthly audience of active users is about 355 million, with about 100 million registered outside of China. In addition to sending messages, voice and video communications (including "Internet radio mode"), the application can install games (and share the results with friends a la Google Play Games), has a built-in similarity of Instagram (called 朋友- “Circle of friends” for photo sharing), allows you to join communities or subscribe to company updates (community QR codes are posted everywhere). The application itself is free, has built-in purchases - for example, sets of emoticons are sold.

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

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

Laiwang 来往 [Lai Wang] www.laiwang.com
This is a messenger from the Alibab 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 (main competitor) in the number of users and the amount of embedded services.

Music Video

Services for streaming video and listening to music are very popular in China. There are several analogues of YouTube, which make good money on a rather intrusive advertising.
Chinese users do not feel completely deprived of the lack of YouTube, and at 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 largely copies YouTube.

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

Sohu 搜狐 视频 [Sohu] tv.sohu.com



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

Xiami 虾米 [Syami] www.xiami.com (not to be confused with Xiaomi - phone maker)
Alibaba music service introduced in 2013. A very popular music platform among young people.

PPTV - www.pptv.com



Famous p2p video viewing application. The repertoire is practically unlimited - starting with the Korean TV series (extremely popular in China), ending with the novelties of Hollywood (content licensing is a separate issue).

Blog platforms

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

Blogbus - www.blogbus.com



Known paid blog platform.

36kr 36 氪 (Krypton) www.36kr.com
A platform for sharing information on startups. Here young entrepreneurs receive information on the latest trends in the IT sphere.

SocialBeta - www.socialbeta.com

This platform in some way copies mashable.com. 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

Sohu blogs are popular among Chinese Internet users.

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

Microblogging

Twitter a la Twitter is incredibly popular in China. Of course, there are some differences here - for example, for the Chinese, the restriction of 140 characters is not such a problem, since in this volume, using hieroglyphs, one can fit much more information 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. Daily in the service published about 100 million entries. There is an opinion that Weibo can 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 write it off.

Tencent Weibo 腾讯 微 博 [Tensun Weibo] reg.t.qq.com
A similar service from the company Tencent, 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 the major search engine Sohu. In popularity also lags behind competitors in the market.

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

Social networks

Social networks are analogs of Facebook, Vkontakte, etc. The first in China has been blocked since 2008, at the same time similar Chinese services have received an impetus to the 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, embedded microblogging, photo albums, the ability to listen to music and watch videos.

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



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

The service also helps in finding friends by 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 People’s Republic of China, 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 in the “place of birth” section only Chinese provinces are listed.
Today, the popularity of the network is declining, but the audience is still approximately 194 million people, of whom a third visits the network from mobile phones. The main audience - 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 placed on real names and on adding real friends. As in Facebook, users can subscribe to company pages.

Kaixin001 网 [Kaixin-van] (“Happiness Network”) www.kaixin001.com
Kaixin 001 is owned by Oak Pacific Interactive, the owner of Renren. The success of the network is not least due to copying flash games from Facebook, thanks to which the network has gained a reputation for playing the game.

Forums

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

Tianya 天涯 [Tien-i] (“the end of the world”) www.tianya.cn/bbs
This forum provides BBS services, a blog platform, microblogging, a photo and video exchange platform. The forum is one of the most popular in mainland China, even politicians and officials resort to its help.

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

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

Maopu 猫 扑 [Maopu-wang] 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 Lepre).

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

Reviews and Reviews

Chinese consumers actively leave comments about certain goods and services. Below 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 establishments. Here users can rate places and leave their impressions of the visit. You can search through the choice of the city and category, or through the usual search field.

Douban 豆瓣 [Douban] www.douban.com
Douban began as a review service for books, films, and music in 2005 (known analogues are Imhonet, kinopoisk). Today, the service has become a very popular social network. The most famous among the educated urban population (students and white collar workers). As of 2013, the number of registered users is about 72 million with a 200 millionth attendance per month.

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 for films, books and music are accessible to 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 Shipyin] movie.douban.com
Service from Douban, sharpened on movies (the functionality is similar to Guevara).

Xiachufang 下 厨房 [Shachufang] (“cooking in the kitchen”) www.xiachufang.com
Site dedicated to cooking. Recipes, tips, information about products - everything is here. There are both desktop and mobile versions. 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 to avoid eating a rat in a Chinese eatery, because with it you can cook at home. Given the monolingual nature of the portal, for a foreigner this is a questionable utility advice.

Jiepang 街旁 [Jie-pan] (“street”) jiepang.com
Jiepang copies the functionality of Foursquare - you can cheek and share with friends, create interest groups. Mobile application is present on iOS and Android.

Liuliu 遛遛 [Liu] (“walk”) liuliu.co
This is a newly emerging mobile (iOS) social network for pet owners - love dogs and cats share photos of their pets, can organize joint walks, and also look for new owners or partners for mating for them (no matter how funny it sounds).

M-time 时光 网 [ Shiguang Wang] 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. Alibaba is the largest player in this market, but it also has competitors.

Taobao 淘宝网taobao.com

All known Taobao - the largest trading platform in the likeness of eBay, belongs to Alibaba. Both large companies (mainly on the special section Tmall.com) and private individuals act as sellers - the threshold for entering the business for the Chinese is rather low, which, however, is accompanied by extreme competition. Not a small role in the popularity and availability of making online purchases is played by an over-developed network of fast delivery services - low prices for deliveries in the country plus high speed of order fulfillment. The payment system is also well built, in which the seller receives money for the goods only after confirmation of receipt from the buyer - until this point, the payment system is retained by the Alipay payment system.

Jingdong 京东 [Jingdong] JD.com



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

Dazhong Dianping 大众 点评 [Dazhong Dianping] www.dianping.com/citylist
In addition to the rating system and reviews mentioned above, the portal contains elements of electronic commerce and the sale of coupons.

Jumeiyoupin 美 优 品 [Jumei Yupin] bj.jumei.com
A portal for popular in China collective purchases and distribution of coupons, similar to Groupon and Kupikupon. The main product is cosmetics.

Meituan 美 团 [Matuan] bj.meituan.com
Recommended 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 network of electronics stores, which also acquired the possibility of buying goods via the Internet.

Tourist sites

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

Qunar 去 哪儿 [Quinar] (“where are we going?”) Qunar.com
A very well-known integrated portal in China that provides ticket search services (air and train), hotel reservations, purchase of entrance tickets to tourist or entertainment complexes, etc. The audience is about 75 million visits per month (according to 2013 data)

Ctrip 携程 [Se-chen] ctrip.com
Large, now an international portal where you can buy air and railway 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. The audience is about 60 million registered users.

Qiongyou 穷 游 [Tsyunyun] www.qyer.com
The travel forum has grown to a large portal with a large number of opportunities for planning a trip, including the possibility of booking tickets and finding a hotel. The site is quite a developed community, which actively shares tips and advice.

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

Lǘpingwang 评 网 [Lupine Van] www.lvping.com
The portal calls itself a “personal travel guide.” On it you can find tickets, hotels and other services (but directly purchase occurs on the websites of partners).

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

Dating

Sites and platforms listed below may differ significantly among themselves, but all of them have a common purpose: meeting new people.

Jiayuan 佳 缘 [Jiayuan] www.jiayuan.com
Jiayuan is the largest online dating service. Positioned as a "pranks" site that creates married couples, so the relationship "at times" are not welcome here. The company is present on NASDAQ.

Baihe 百合 [Baihe] www.baihe.com and Zhenai 网 [Zhenai-wang] www.zhenai.com - similar sites.

Momo 陌 陌 [Mo Mo Mo] www.immomo.com
Mobile application to search for new acquaintances nearby. Very popular with expats in China and with Chinese students.

Business network

Resumes, job advertisements, headhunting, work acquaintances - in general, LinkedIn-like services.

Dajiewang 大街 网 [Dajie-wang] www.dajie.com
Large network for job search, posting resumes and jobs. The main audience are students and recent graduates. In addition to work, you can find companies for internship. There are communities like LinkedIn.

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

Easy blogging

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

Qing 轻 [Qing] (“easy, easy”) qing.blog.sina.com.cn
Qing is an easy hipster blog 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 social network RenRenWang is designed to expand the presence of RenRen in various areas of activity. Target audience - office workers.

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

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

Share photos and pictures

Sharing photos and pictures is not fundamentally different from Western services - instagram-like services are experiencing rapid development. Some of these platforms have common features with easy blogging.

Huaban 花瓣 [Huaban] huaban.com and Duitang 糖 [Duytan] www.duitang.com
Services for sharing images a la Pinterest.

Papa 啪啪 [Pa-pa] papa.me
Hybrid Instagram and mobile messenger with Chinese characteristics.

Video sharing

Weishi 微 视 [Weishi] (“microvideo”) weishi.com

The full analogue of Vine, the owner is Tencent, exclusively a mobile application. You can record video 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 quite a few local resources.

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

Guoke [Goke] www.guokr.com
Specializes in scientific and technical articles. Popular among students. It works on the “question-answer” principle, which makes the site related to Google responses and sub-issues.

Zhihu 知 乎 [Zhi-hoo] (“Did you know?”) Www.zhihu.com
Looks like Quora, but with a focus on answers, not discussion. At the end of 2013, the audience had about 10 million active users.

Aiwen 爱 问 网 [Aiwen-wang] (sometimes “iAsk”) www.ai-wen.net
Simple question and answer service from Sina.

"Social Shopping"

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

Meilishuo 美丽 说 [Meili-sho] www.meilishuo.com
Mogujie 蘑菇 街 [Mogujie] (“street of mushrooms”) www.mogujie.com
Dongxi 文库 [Dongxi-wenku] dongxi.net
Guoku 果 库 [Goku] www.guoku.com/selected
All these portals are similar to fancy.com or en.itao.com - they allow you to search for interesting products, share with friends, rate, and, ultimately, buy.

Weitao 微 淘 [Weitao] we.taobao.com
A simple mobile version of Taobao with quite good functionality (including a product search by barcode).

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