China is a world in itself and so are the Chinese cyber world. While rest of the world generally sticks to Facebook, Orkut and MySpace etc, Chinese have their own Social Networking Websites. According to a study carried out by CR-Nielsen from 1st December till 28th December, 2008, the following Social Networking Sites are the top 10 best social networking sites in China:
1. 51.com
User Stats: 14 million unique visit per week
51.com (hereinafter referred to 51), established in August 2005, is the largest social network service provider in China. 51 is jointly invested by Sequoia Capital, SIG Asia Investments (SAI), Giant Interactive, Intel Capital, Redpoint Ventures and other renowned international enterprises and venture funds.
51 is committed to offer its users stable services to store their personal data such as photo and blogs, and to provide facilities to let them easily communicate to each other. As of June 2008, 51 has over 120 million register users, among them 31.5 million login at least once a month. These users generate about 350 million page view per day, upload over 10 million photos and write over 3 million blogs per day.
2. Xiaonei.com
User Stats: 9.5 million unique visits per week
(literally “on-campus network” in Chinese) is a social networking site with the look and feel of Facebook except that it is in Simplified Chinese. According to BeijingReview.com, as of November 2007, Xiaonei was “China’s largest online community website among universities” with more than 8.8 million active users and an estimated 15 million users who have registered their real names.
Xiaonei.com is also considered to be the most powerful student social network service in Mainland China, especially among university students.
3. Chinaren.com
User Stats: 7 million unique visits per week
Sohu.com owns Chinaren as it is one of its brands operating as Social Networking site. Sohu.com Inc. is China’s premier online brand and indispensable to the daily life of millions of Chinese, providing a network of web properties and community based/web 2.0 products which offer the vast Sohu user community a broad array of choices regarding information, entertainment and communication. Sohu has built one of the most comprehensive matrices of Chinese language web properties and proprietary search engines, consisting of seven leading web properties.
4. Kaixin001.com
User Stats: 3.5 million
Kaixin (Chinese aka “Happy Net”) is a social networking website launched in April, 2008. The startup has grown to more than 8 million active users in China in less than 5 months. They are rumored to have raised their first round of capital. In 2009, Kaixin001 ranks the 13th most popular website in China according to Alexa Internet.
5. Myspace.cn
User Stats: 2 million
MySpace is a social networking website with an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music, and videos for teenagers and adults internationally. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California, USA where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, Fox Interactive Media. MySpace Cn is owned by MySpace.
6. 5460.net
User Stats: 1 million
One more Social Networking Site in the long list of such sites serving Chinese.
7. Wangyou.com
User Stats: 1 million
WangYou Media is a leading youth-oriented SNS site in China with over 11 million subscribers. The company focuses on promoting user-generated content (UGC) — a process of creating, sharing, organizing and distributing all forms of digital amateur materials, including personal journals, photo albums, radio talk shows, home movies, flash animation, cartoons and more. WangYou Media is funded by Charles River Ventures and Transcosmos.
8. Ipart.cn
User Stats: 1 million
Another fast growing social networking site in China
Website of Ipart
9. 360quan.com
User Stats: 900k
The Israel-based Koolanoo Group owns 360Quan. It also owns Koolanoo.com – the first social network for young Jewish professionals. The Koolanoo Group maintains offices in Tel AVIV and Beijing. 360Quan was started in 2003.
10.Cyworld.com.cn
User Stats: 800k
Cyworld is a social networking website launched on Sep 1, 1999. Cyworld is a South Korean web community site operated by SK Communications, a subsidiary of SK Telecom. Literally translated, “Cy” could mean “cyber”, but is also a play on the Korean word for relationship, so it could also mean “relationship.” Cyworld, much like an virtual space in the internet, which users can decorate their “home” and invite friends.
In addition, Tencent’s SNS website Q-zone, which says over 200 million users login its website every month, is not included in the top ten SNS websites in China. The CR-Nielsen team thinks that the scope for Social Networking Sites is growing in China but the US based sites are still not able to fully get into the competition because of the language and cultural differences as well as the system limits and other regulations.
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{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post! Do you know what CR-Nielsen measured to have this result?
To be good you must actively get involved and seek ways to aid those in your network and not merely wait to be asked. Web 2.0
@Tim-Ho! Actually CR-Nielsen stands for ChinaRank-Neilsen. It is joint venture between two companies i.e ChinaRank and Neilsen. Since both of them are experts in their own areas, they formed this jv to cater to their growing business requirements in China. ChinaRank is the part which provides the ranking to the site while Nielsen carries out measurement and analysis services.
As you might be aware that these companies do not share majority of their criteria for such ranking so frankly speaking i do not have any insight available into the exact methodology that they might have used for this purpose. Since they are big names of the industry, we can take a safe bet by trusting their ranking.
@Web 2.0! I agree Web 2.0 and that is why it is our goal to reply to each and every relevant comment on our site and we will make sure it is followed in its true spirit down the road when we have a large number of visitors and hundreds of comments. Thanks for your feedback.
Lol, a lot of those are not REALLY social networking website, not in your usual sense.
Oh the glory of Kaixin001!!! But, they are actually, a game site….. People are there to play Happy Farm, which is the wicked application that lets you work, earn money, raise a farm, buy houses and decorate your rooms. Kinda like a REALLY toned down but cheap and awesome version of second life.
I go to Wangyou all the time and I wasn’t even aware that they are a social networking site? I go there to read comic books…lol.
lol
Hey totally brilliant, great effort for this work you’ve done. Could I replicate this post on my site?
Does any of these websites have possibility for English language interface?
Nopes Yiwan
let us check it “> alert(document.cookie);
nice collection of social networking websites in the china.
hi..i lliked the way of collecting different websites..can u giveme more information in the same way to promote the wwebsites
QZone of Tencent is not in this list?
Hi, found this through bing. just wanted to let you know that part. but um, thanks for the article. It’s good to know.
This info is slightly outdated now. For a better list of important Chinese sites check out this post http://goo.gl/zFHM
nice collection of social networking websites in the china.
Im 16 am I able to use this product safely?
Interesting, your’s is the second site today that I’ve visited with this opportunity. I’ll keep an eye on it.
Where can I get this iPhone tracker?
Great Website. It’s really benefit alot of people. Thanks
Facebook should be no.1 but don’t see it, why? It’s a global brand and no.1 in many countries but China???
Facebook is blocked in China by the gov. So it has a dim chance of competing!
All Indians living in India and Abroad are requested to boycott all chinese products to protest against anti-indian activities by chinese troops along the LOC
Content is KING, that right!
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