Social Networking in China; Catching Up Fast

- 8 January 2009 - Categories: Trends in social networking

guanxiThe rise of a more social web really caught on like wildfire in China when companies started copying Western social networking services and tweaking them to suit the Chinese market better. As a result in contrary to most areas in the world where Facebook or MySpace have obtained the biggest market share, in China the market has been flooded with local social networking initiatives and several local players have ballooned into giants with hundreds of millions of members. Online social networking is extremely popular in China, it seems to be a perfect match for several reasons. Obviously Chinese netizens very much like the social character of online social networking; they enjoy meeting friends online and social networking sites are a perfect platform for this. Furthermore youngsters that are either still in school or just started working are very busy with their studies or have moved to another area for their career. This makes it hard for them to stay in touch with friends and family and maintain real-life relationships. Social networking sites and other Web 2.0 services help these people to keep in contact and at night, after work, during breaks or after school, hundreds millions of netizens log on for their daily portion of social interaction.As a result social networks with numerous different target groups are sprouting like mushrooms. Not only because of the huge market but also as a result of the skewed user base in China (the discrepancy between web-illiterate and web-literate netizens has a profound impact on the diversity of the Chinese Internet market and online culture) the online social networking market in China is rather diverse. To illustrate this here is a short list of some important players in the Chinese social networking market:

  • 51.com - Basic social networking site aimed at relatively web-inexperienced teenagers in lower tier cities. Approximately 120 million users.
  • Xiaonei – Often referred to as being the Chinese Facebook. A ‘campus“ social network targeted at white collar students and office workers in top tier cities with over 30 million registered users.
  • Kaixin001 – Another Facebook clone growing very fast. Aimed at older white-collar office workers with 7.5 million users since it was launched in May 2008.
  • Qzone – Popular personalized multimedia space from Tencent that is built around self expression, content sharing and peer interaction. Has over 100 million active users.
  • Douban – Popular and vastly growing book, music, and movie recommendation and reviewing community.
  • Neocha – An innovative social network that gives members the ability to upload a variety of artistic media in an effort to provide them with a platform in which they can promote it to a greater audience.

Xiaonei advertising in a Chinese subway stationTo attract more users in this young yet highly competitive market unlike in the West where marketing primarily takes place online, in China social networking companies often make use of offline advertising and marketing. “Offline marketing is pretty important in China to support word-of-mouth both offline and online.” says Benjamin Joffe, managing director of Plus Eight Star Ltd (+8*), a Beijing based mobile and Internet innovation consultancy firm. For example Xiaonei advertises in the subway areas of Beijing (pictured). Xiaonei also organizes offline networking events at Chinese universities to attract new users and stimulate word-of-mouth advertising. Gang Lu, founder of MOBINODE, a popular China Web 2.0 blog and China Internet expert, explains that in China various SN companies “pro-actively organize offline events.” According to Gang Lu, 51.com has even distributed offline application forms with an accompanying gift for new potential users. 51.com staff would help people fill in these forms and even processes the data on their behalf.

The popularity of social networking has been an eye opener for many other Internet service operators that are trying to jump in and anticipate on the trend. Portals, gaming companies and video sharing sites, to name a few, have realized that going social is the key for attracting and retaining users. For example: Sina, a market leading portal in China, has added plenty of social elements to its celebrity blogging services, and also Giant Interactive, a prominent MMORPG developer took a 25 percent stake in the social network 51.com. Also Douban the innovative book, music and movie recommendation and review community innitially started off as a more traditional website before transforming into a social network. Web services like Douban are keen to implement more social features not only for growing a loyal user base but also for new ways of monetization. Large online communities like Tencent“s Qzone, 51.com or Xiaonei.com have proven that users are willing to pay for social interactions and other web services are eager to copy parts of this thriving business model. Max Huang, spokesperson and assistant to the chairman of 51.com, on this: “At 51.com we think we can offer free service to our customer while we make revenue from the interaction between our customers.”

The Chinese social network market is huge (over 250 million people have access to the Internet) and regarding the low Internet penetration in China (around 19%) social networks will likely continue to grow vastly. Moreover as netizens in the coastal areas of China are becoming more experienced and the market matures, interesting developments are starting to take place. After copying and incrementally tweaking concepts from other more developed markets, in the near future there will be an increasing amount of social networking related innovations coming from China that we in the West can learn from. Regarding the rapid development and maturing market I am convinced that sooner than expected we will see Western social networks copying ideas from the more advanced East.

[This post is an edited excerpt of my masters thesis on globalization and innovation in the Chinese Internet market]

Be Sociable, Share!
No TweetBacks yet. (Be the first to Tweet this post)
(Nog niet gestemd)
Loading ... Loading ...
About this author: Pieter-Paul graduated on the internationalization of the Chinese Internet industry. For his thesis research he visited numerous Chinese Internet companies and performed over 30 interviews with, among others, experts, CEO’s, government officials, bloggers, and VCs. Pieter-Paul continues to focus on innovation in China as he recently moved to Beijing and is now working for +8* (www.plus8star.com), the leading cross-market and cross-cultural strategic consultancy focused on Internet and mobile innovation in Asia. Previously Pieter-Paul has studied in Hong Kong and traveled extensively through the Asia-Pacific region with a particular focus on Mainland China.
Related posts:

Comments are closed.