Chinese leading social network, Renren, is working on a Quora-like question-and-answer service and will launch it soon, said an industry insider.
Given Chinese internet companies will clone whatever popular in the Sillicon valley, this is only a matter of time. Quora’s online community is famous because it includes such accomplished people as Marc Andreessen, Dustin Moskovitz and Steve Case. I wonder who will be the stars and the opinion leaders that kick off Renren’s query service.
As of today, Renren has no celebrity-tie yet. It started from several prominent universities in China, mostly based in Beijing. Renren (or Xiaonei at that time) was basically their student directories. And then it spread to all other universities, colleagues and white collar workers. (It basically follows the path of Facebook.)
Actually, Sina is better connected with the Chinese celebrities – maybe it should have a Quora like services, too, as an extension to its microblog, Weibo. Sina’s Weibo built its popularity by having Chinese celebrities to use its services. Now, the next step is to ask them to answer questions.
For people who are clear about Quora, here is some background info: U.S. based Quora was found by Facebook’s former CTO, Adam D’Angelo, and Charlie Cheever. It is a social network that allows users to ask questions and give answers. Additionally, users can comment on the questions and answers and “upvote” or “downvote” the answers. An “Answer Summary” can be created to reflect the consensus of the community. This summary is a wiki that can be edited by any registered user. It is still an invite only service. You have to have an invitation to register.
But how many of China’s top Weiboers can actually write interesting answers to interesting questions?
Good question