I am not a big fan of social networks in general, but Linkedin is probably the most visited one for me, because it’s professional. That’s why I really hope there is one for Chinese. UShi is probably the most active one right now, but I think they still get lots to do.
So maybe we just need keep trying as we know the market is still widely open in China. Jingwei, RenRen‘s professional social network is launched in beta today.
The private beta version is still a bit buggy, even some core features such as Search are not working properly yet. But looking at its menu, it’s more or less like Linkedin. Currently, Jingwei offers functions like Profile, Connections, Group, Companies which are more or less like Linkedin’s at least at this stage. The interesting bit is that Jingwei also developed the Q&A features as it’s said that Jingwei’s vision is to be something like Linkedin+Quora. As it only gets few test users right now, so I can not tell how well the Quora function could be well integrated into a professional network.
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.
Interesting enough, I am visiting Linkedin office at Mountain View today and have been told that last night Linkedin have reached 100millions users from 200 counties and territories. I am not sure what’s the percentage of Chinese users there and for a Chinese professional network how long it will take to reach that milestone.. Long long way to go…
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