WaZhua founded by my friend Simon, has its first version released, it looks like a MyblogLog. You can use a widget (badge) on your blog to build a social network, record who are the visitors and also promote your blog.
The Market
MyBlogLog was acquired by Yahoo only after 3 month after it founded for $10m. This most likely will not happen to a startup like WaZhua in China. WaZhua is still at its very early stage (as I said, it still looks like Mybloglog), the functions are not powerful enough (no site statistics, etc) and the idea is not very clear yet (There are two social networks on WaZhua, one is centered by the blog and the other is by users’ favorite singers/bands. I am not sure how these two networks can somehow and why they should join together. For me, whether the editor of the blog like my favorite band Beyond or not dose not really matter). However, I think WaZhua has found a market which is still new to Chinese blogosphere. Most of Chinese bloggers use the blog as a way of expressing their feeling and enjoy the comments from the friends, and sooner or later they will realize that the blog can be an efficient way to gather the users who can share the similar thoughts together. Blogging has become a way of networking more than publishing.
The Worries
Like the Chinese Internet, the Chinese blogosphere is still very young. There are millions of bloggers and the number is increasing rapidly everyday, but how many Chinese bloggers can understand the widget and know how to use the widget? Most of bloggers have their blogs on the BSPs, but how many BSPs have left the flexibility to its users to tune their blogs and how many users bother spending time on adding the widget?
As a conclusion, I love the idea of WaZhua and agree it could be a hit on Chinese blogosphere. However, I am not sure if it can get its popularity by mouth-to-mouth like MyBlogLog, therefore establishing some official partnership with BSPs might be a way to make life easier.
The following is my WaZhua badge (The top shows my personal info, my wazhua network is showed in the middle with a Add to Community button, the marquee shows the messages left by my friends.):
Leave a comment