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.

Baidu, the China search giant has officially launched its instant messenger (IM) page. Its foray into the IM market has been a big win. They got a huge publicity on the China Web market, as I observed most of the major online news providers, blogs, most of them are reporting about their latest IM move. In the beginning of the month, I did posted a brief introduction on Baidu IM, now I knew that China users can download the IM software by visiting this page.

Baidu, now not only compete directly with QQ, the most popular IM software in China, it also clear that they’re attempting to offer a full range of Web products to the China users. What will be their next move, Baidu Mail, or Baidu English version of search engine?

The other day I came across a new gaming site that called QQ Games. It is also designed as an official plugin for the AIM users to play games with their buddies online. In order to play the games that offered by QQ Games, one must become an AIM user and download the plugin that weight in at 11.8MB. The platform this QQ Games supports at this moment is Windows. In the meantime, the games available include Treasure Hunter, Robo, Match Master, Black Jack, and Pool. According to the statistical data compiled from Quantcast, QQ Games has attracted more than 160,000 monthly uniques barely in the US.

QQ, a strong domestic brand name in China when people come to using the instant messaging service. On the other hand, AIM is AOL’s instant messenger (IM), both have laid a strong foundation involving the Web startups based on the IM platform. The creation of QQ Games plugin is a great example of how a China company works with an American firm and provides a good case for the Chinese entrepreneur that was pondering how to go on from what has already been achieve in China and replicate the success in the US market.

According to a news (in Mandarin) in China, QQ, a popular instant messenger released by Tencent is quitting the Taiwan market. Known as 麻吉QQ, a product collaborated by these two parties, i.e. Tencent and Yam in November 2003. However, this product is not well acceptably by the Taiwan people and not generated the astonishing returns as expected. Since the released in Taiwan’s market, it has only reached one (1) million users, not a substantial amount of users when compared to another instant messenger such as MSN.

I wonder why they can’t made the above mentioned instant messenger a well-known name as QQ in China? Was it just a product born in a wrong timing? Was it just bad luck? Or was it the starting of the rise and fall of Yam.com, the first portal and content provider created in Taiwan, now far lag behind of Yahoo! Taiwan.

It’s hard for any company that stand out amid all the competition in the China’s Internet market, but QQ, owned by Tencent has done it. It gained popularity in China through offering the services of instant messenger, later launched the social bookmarking tool, and now with the Qzone portal and Qzone City Elites services offered to the Chinese people. Qzone City Elites is a sub-domain of Qzone. As you visit the Qzone, it comprised of several features that acted as free services to break into the Chinese market, such as blog, photo gallery, mini house, forum, and etc.

Qzone City Elites has just launched in the Chinese market. A platform that allowed the Chinese people in China to post about their personal particular such as occupation, hobbies, educational background, celebrity they admired, personal character, and many more. Within the beta pre-release to the stage of official goes live, Qzone City Elites has attracted more than 15,000 members and the hot cities include Chongqing and Wuhan with the growing members of 2704 and 2259 respectively.

There comes a rumor in China that Google was preparing to acquire Mapabc, a leading web map application that provides directions and interactive map mainly the areas in China. If Google really acquire Mapabc, it will definitely complement the existing Google Maps’ services in China, the Google Ditu. According to a source (in Mandarin) in China, if the deal is going to take place, Mapabc will still remains as a stand-alone subsidiary of Google China and Google China would not interfere the daily operations of Mapabc. In fact, Mapabc has closed some strategic partnerships with several established players in the world even before the above proposed acquisition. They have partnered with Multimap, a leading online maps provider in Europe, and had a pre-existing business relationship with Google China, their closest partner in China. But as usual, no official announcement that found on Google’s home page pertaining to this proposed acquisition.

Mapabc is based in Beijing China, was shortlisted as the top 50 most valuable web application in year 2005. Their strongest competitor in the China’s online maps services include O.CN, owned by Tencent, a provider of messenger services in China and QQ Shuqian.

QQ, a famous messenger service in China, has released the social bookmark service, i.e. QQ Shuqian to its VIP members. QQ is a product of Tencent; I have wrote a post on it that entitled, TM 2007 Beta 1 First Impression in January this year. Frankly, I’ve been quite surprise that they launched this social bookmark service in China. Neither this is not their direction nor social bookmarking service does not compliment their existing product lines. However, as I visited the QQ Shuqian home page, the reception of its China’s members is positive. Some url bookmarks have even been saved by more than 200 people.

Is QQ Shuqian going to be the next del.icio.us in China Internet market? And/Or they going to be the strongest competitor for Mister Wong German (my another post) when it officially launched in China?

Sina.com of China just ran an interesting news, entitled, “2006 IT Awards in China” (in Mandarin). This is an annual ceremony to honor and pays tribute to the top 10 IT firms and most important people in China. This award was jointly organized by these three parties, i.e. Yesky, Sina, and Nanfang Daily.

I’m not going to talk about any of the top 10 most important people. The main reason is this, I feel it’s a bit of trivial to talk about the successful people here, as you probably would understand I will only focus my writing on startups and companies. Please pardon my viewpoint.

The top 10 IT firms in China is as follows:

Alibaba, Google China, Gome, Lenovo, Hasee, Shanda, Tencent, Tom.com, Xunlei, and Intel China.

I believed most of the readers have heard of Alibaba, Google, Lenovo, and Intel. For Alibaba, I also wrote some of the latest news of Alibaba, you can check with the sidebar of this blog to know more about it. For other companies, I will briefly explain here and you also can click the links as I provided in the above. Gome is a portal that mainly sell electronic products. And Hasee, it is a successful portal that sell PCs, laptops, and computer related items in China. Shanda, i.e. Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited, went public and listed in Nasdaq, is a leading interactive entertainment media company in China and offers a portfolio of diversified entertainment content that is accessible via the Internet. Whereas Tencent is a successful company that released the well-known QQ messenger. I also wrote a post that entitled, “TM 2007 Beta 1 First Impression” recently. Another company, Tom.com, it is a company that partner with eBay China and they are going to jointly-launch a new portal and I will write on that soon. And lastly, Xunlei, as you probably heard of Google has bought a stake in Xunlei, to know more about this company, you can read my another post, entitled, “Google China Invested in Xunlei“.

My sense is that from now on, it is interesting to know which firm will going to succeed in China this year. 2008 will tell.