Hainei, another Facebook clone in China has a new feature this week. That new feature is the highly configurable poll system that give its users to post their questions and receive feedback from other Hainei users. Look at the picture I enclosed in the below, you’ll learn from other users on “what is the best programming language to develop a Web app?” and the answer from the Hainei community is PHP. Aha, I wonder it is the correct answer.

Hainei is a Facebook clone that was launched in end of 2007. Ironically, it was the second social networking project by Mr. Wang Xing, the founder of Xiaonei. Hainei was launched based on a careful review that China or Chinese users need another social networking platform, other than Xiaonei that was mainly targeting at the students, whereas Hainei is a social networking platform for the adults. Although the design of Hainei is different from Xiaonei, the features or functionality from sign-up till enter the user profile is similarly the same, besides this poll system.

Do Chinese users need another social networking platform other than Xiaonei or Facebook? I will become convince that the answer is yes if Hainei really execute the repositioning of brand and attract more Chinese users other than solely from China. I’ve a lot of close friends that did not join Facebook, they perceived Facebook as something to do with a community whereby users need to have a degree from some Ivy-League schools, or well-speaking English; and majority of Facebook’s Chinese users are those who are banana Chinese (who know speak and read English very well, but don’t know Mandarin at all and they keep on shouting to a lot of people that they love Facebook!). On the other hand, Xiaonei is purely occupied by China students. It failed to position as a platform for all the Chinese users to get along with and happily interact with each other there.

At this moment, I do not know what is the future plan of Hainei on how it targeting the Chinese working adults. But reading some of the open polls is really a funny thing to do. All the polls are restricted to registered Hainei users, and you can also read the detailed statistics, results display before the voting. By the way, those who create the open poll can set the expiry date of the poll.

Sina, one of the China famous portals has launched “the famous Chinese bloggers column.” On Sina blog home page, if you scroll down to the bottom, you’ll find all the Chinese blogs that classified under different headings. There are blogs classified under celebrity, entertainment, sport, writer, grassroot bloggers, culture, business, academia, feel, media, and IT.

This famous blogs column is particularly helpful for one if she want to know more about what happening in China, the China trends, or what’s on their minds of several successful business or Internet entrepreneurs. From there, I found few blogs that interested me, such as the blog of Kaifu Lee, the head of Google China, 余秋雨 (a famous author), Jackie Chan, and etc.

Visit this site and select which blog you might want to follow.

The other day I talked about Xiaonei, a successful Facebook clone in China. It seemed that social network and the clone Facebook UI (User Interface) still a great deal in China, as the China IM (instant messenger) giant, QQ has launched its social networking service, a Facebook clone to its IM users few days ago.

This QQ social network is called QQ Xiaoyou, in Chinese mean “QQ校友,” i.e. QQ alumni. It is currently in private beta phase, and will be launched to the selected QQ IM users. In fact, QQ is claimed as the number one IM provider in China, combining a critical mass of its IM users: active users 220 million out of registered users 570 million, and the messages sending approx. 1 billion per day, QQ has built an unique stronghold in IM services in China. In China, every startups want to emulate the success of QQ or Baidu, but most of these startups are late starters in the race to build such a huge user base.

On QQ Xiaoyou’s landing page, you’ll notice it look exactly like Facebook, but QQ Xiaoyou use green color instead of blue to make it clear that they’re not another Facebook. Nevertheless, this move is its second attempt to break into the University or college students’ community, as QQ has launched its first social networking community called “QQ Campus” in July 2007, but eventually have neither profits nor much in the way of market share to show for it.

For private beta users to register their accounts at QQ Xiaoyou, they need to use their real names, not their IM usernames as usual. To verify their users, QQ Xiaoyou is taking 3 to 5 days for each registered users in order to inhibit the fake accounts fraud, as shown in the picture below.

Xiaonei, the China’s Facebook clone is announcing the launched of its developer platform. According to CNet China, Xiaonei is the first China-based social network to launch its first-of-its-kind developer platform. However, don’t get Xiaonei wrong, this initiative is not its move in facing-off with Facebook, it’s just follow what Facebook’s market positioning in order to attract more users, and Chinese developers.

Like many others who came across Facebook, but never heard of Xiaonei, it’s exactly a Facebook clone. On the landing page, it looks pretty much exactly like the Facebook home page. The user interface, design, width and length of the layout, a small icon “your online friend(s) located in the bottom right looks the same as found on Facebook, but the only difference you can found is the language, i.e. Chinese Simplified. It is important to understand that Xiaonei is one of the top social networking sites in China, according to metric such as registered users amounted to 20 million. If you want to register as an user, you need to submit your personal details, that’s it. Unlike some other sites in China, you need to key in the China identity card number during the login authentication process. I’m not from China, I faced this difficult situation like this all the time. However, on Xiaonei, what you need to fill-up are the name, password, email address, as well as the country territory you’re coming from (currently you can only fill-up that you’re from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan or Macau). Upon you registered yourself into the Xiaonei system, you can find your friends through MSN, 163, 126, Sina, or Yahoo! Mail. Additionally, you also can search and filter your friends through your email clients such as Outlook or Foxmail. One little caveat from Xiaonei is please upload your photo as well as use your real name, if you do that, you’re entitled to be a so-called “Star” user, and hence enjoy unlimited storage space on Xiaonei.

Facebook platform has been key to Facebook’s positioning, but I wonder the forthcoming Xiaonei platform will also become the greatest asset to Xiaonei. Nevertheless, this might served as a mental shift to a China startup like Xiaonei as one open up its platform, it will thus open up its user base to the third-party developers. Traditionally, user base is being treated as a confidential and yet very important asset to a Chinese startup. However, it is interesting to see that MySpace China and 51.com have also both agreed to open up their platforms to the developers.

Currently, Xiaonei developer platform is open to some beta developers, and is not a production-ready platform. All the applications developed will be tested internally, before this platform is fully launch in mid of June. All applications are built using Xiaonei APIs that appeared on Xiaonei user profile page are not from the third-party developers, but served as the local own applications of Xiaonei. This include My Blog, Photo Album, Group, Share List, My Classes, My Club, Gift, Market, Movie, Sports, Sanguo (as shown in the below picture). Users are allowed to install or remove the applications if they want to. And all of these can be found on the left-hand sidebar. So, at least for now, there are few applications for Xiaonei users to play around with.

Picture 1: Application Page

Picture 2: Xiaonei Sangou

Google China is launching a new search engine for China’s Sichuan users to find the latest updates of all the China quake victims that buried under the rubble.

Meanwhile, there are several other Chinese sites which created to help find the Sichuan victims, included Tianya Laiba, Baidu Tieba, Soso, Sina Quake help, and NetEase survivors’ list.

A new Google Finance in Mandarin has been launched in China. It allowed investors in China to find out the latest updates of all the information in securities markets, and of course, they will find some sophisticated financial advices there too. For your information, this site was jointly created by the Google’s engineers that based in New York and Shanghai.

The product offerings of this Google Finance Chinese version is relatively no different from the other versions such as the US, Canada, and UK versions. Content found on the Google Finance China is geographic catering to the local people. The top left column is as usual, the market summary, as China users will read all the latest news happening in China, not necessarily related to the Shanghai or Shenzhen stock market data. This contrast to the US or UK site, both sites typically showed the stock market info and users there will get a fast grasp on what’s happening to some stocks or funds in respective country.

One unique feature found on this site is the Google Suggest feature. Whenever an user type a letter on the search bar, it will display the search suggestion of some stock quotes or stock portfolios appeared in a fixed dialog box. This feature is helpful, but not sure when Google China will release another advanced feature called Stock Screener to the China people.

The Chinese search giant has a new venture now. It is now entering the online game sector by providing some games through its newest platform called Baidu Youxi. With the recent release of Baidu Hi (instant messenger service) and this online gaming platform, Baidu is considered the biggest Chinese platform that probably cover all the needs of the Chinese young adults.

At present, Baidu does not develop its own casual online games, but chose to offer a portfolio of entertainment through some partnerships with the renowned interactive entertainment media companies such as Shanda Entertainment, Dreamwork Net, and 51wan. Currently, there are seven (7) free online games available to the Chinese users, and most of them such as 纵横天下, 方便面三国, 天空左岸 are very popular in China. Out of four of these seven games, four are developed from 51wan, as reported by this casual game developer.

There are two main selection criteria that set by Baidu in choosing the games, first it must be home-made, i.e. made in China, and secondly, all its online games must be healthy, which mean all family members are welcome to play and view. There will be no violence, sex that can be found on its casual games. Also, games that allow users to gain access to online casino, poker, with access to third-party betting exchange will not be permitted on this Baidu Youxi. Since Baidu Youxi adopt a business model of free-to-play, I still can’t figure out what will be their major revenue streams. But one thing for sure, as more and more online game users are becoming sophisticated, the games available must be in extremely high quality.

Why Baidu engaged in this online game sector? This can be explained by the market outlook of the online game sector in China. China recorded a CNY$12.8 billion during a fiscal year ended December 2007. It has been project forecasted more than 20% growth each year in the next five years. Thus, by year 2011, China’s online game sector will generate more than CNY$40.1 billion. By then, China will be a mature online game market such as South Korea.

CityIN, a new social network launched in last month that targeting the Hong Kong and China people is joining Google’s OpenSocial. As you know, OpenSocial is Google’s first plan to take on Facebook, with a goal to release application programming interfaces (API) that allowed developers to build variety of applications for a range of social networking sites. And the most notable high-profile partner was MySpace.

With the participation of CityIn in OpenSocial, it probably the first Chinese social network that opens its platform to the developers mainly China Web developers. Strengths of the participation in OpenSocial will help to increase the worldwide profile of CityIN, this can be viewed from all the reporting from the top blogs in the blogosphere. As a new startup, it’s probably the best way for them that draw attention to it. CityIn’s challenge will be to build a different social network as there are many among them in China, or throughout the world. As a new startup, that co-founded by young talents, it is currently undertaking the differentiation strategy and was nearly very brave to try out all the new things and developed a lot of new features on their site.

CityIN, co-founded by Simon Chan and Alex Tam, was first incorporated in Hong Kong, and later setup the main operation office in Guangzhou, China in 2007. Simon Chan, 26 and Alex Tam, 25, seemed to be the Internet enthusiasts. With their passion on the Web, and work experience (Simon Chan is a former E-Trade software engineer, reported by VentureBeat), they planned to make CityIN the best ever social network in China. The site is easy-to-navigate, vividly presented content such as latest users, latest events happening in Guangzhou, and a second-edition of recommendation engine, which they’ve planned to apply for the patent in the US, Japan, and Hong Kong in the later stage. Recommendation engine is broad in scope, but it is enough to build a strong bridge from its users of the site that belong to a same group of leisure interest to some friends reside in local areas they might interested to interact with. If they continually improve its recommendation approaches, it might make a lot of potential users to have that compel feeling to join.

Additional interesting feature found on CityIN is the automatic face detection for photo tagging. As one of the hyperlinks they’ve sent to me, as shown in the below picture, it showed how a hassle less feature for CityIN user to play around with. At present, CityIN wasn’t comprehensive yet, with the English proficiently level of its co-founders, it’s no surprise that they’ll launch a brand new English site to cater to the US, Europe, or some countries whereby Friendster is strong at, such as Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia.

Also, in pertaining to its participation on OpenSocial, CityIN still does not have the resources to build proprietary add-on yet. In other word, CityIN will going to be 100% OpenSocial at the beginning stage. However, they’ve received some favorably response from the industry players in casual game sector.

CityIN currently has 11 employees and they’ve been angel invested for a undisclosed sum by Dr. Samson Tam in early 2007. Dr. Tam, who invented the first electronic Dictionary Device (Chinese-English), is the chairman of a listed company in Hong Kong.

Well done, Simon.

Picture: Automatic face detection for photo tagging

Source: available at http://static.cityin.com/images/screenshots/facedetect/steps123.png, accessed at March 22, 2008.