RenRen, China’s Facebook counterpart, has launched a LinkedIn clone calledJingwei.
Jingwei recently entered beta, and it functions pretty much like LinkedIn. It also features a question and answer module, which gives it a Quora flavor of sorts. Focusing on those two features, its main competitors in the country would beUShi, the country’s leading invitation-only business social network, andZhiHu, the Chinese Quora clone.
The country,notoriousfor blocking foreign social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter, also blocked LinkedIn at one stage but made it available again after a day. The California-based professional community has recently hit a 100 million user base milestone, which nowcatersto over 1,000,000 users from China.
According toGang Lu, chief editor ofTechnode, the private beta version is still a bit buggy and some of the core features are not yet working properly. He also adds that by looking at its menu, it’s more or less like LinkedIn. Currently, Jingwei offers functions like Profile, Connections, Group, Companies — which are all are common to LinkedIn as well. Said Lu:
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RenRen is now the leading social network in China, but its user base is still strong at young generation, e.g. university students. So moving to a professional network is quite a natural strategy for me. My doubt is that how RenRen could balance its resource as uploading photos and updating professional connections are totally different user behavior.
China is known forcloningpopular Western websites, but the country is also known forinnovatingbeyond what is copied. Mixing LinkedIn and Quora in one professional social networking site is a proof of that.
Story byFrancis Tan
Francis Tan is the Asia editor of TNW, who is based in the Philippines. He is particularly interested in Asian Internet startups, social me(show all)Francis Tanis the Asia editor of TNW, who is based in the Philippines. He is particularly interested in Asian Internet startups, social media and e-commerce. Get in touch with him via Twitter@francistanor Emailfrancis@thenextweb.com.
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