Here Comes DianDi, the first Chinese Path

Since day one the Path team launched their revamped Path 2.0 late last year and won applause from the tech world as well as the users, some people were pondering on Sina Weibo that how long would it take before a Chinese clone emerges up. Now we had an answer.

Beijing-based social networking company Plato Interactive gave a “local answer” to Path with the debut of DianDi (点滴, or dribs and drabs). I don’t think I need to go into details about the app, you can just picture it as the Simplified Chinese version of Path with reduced functions, for example, with Path you have six moment sharing options: pictures, friend, location, music, post and sleeping status while DianDi removed ‘music’ moment but kept the rest. And the ‘Path Red’ was changed to ‘DianDi Blue’ (pictured below).

screenshot of DianDi

DianDi also faithfully followed Path’s disruptive user interface and interactive pattern, through which you can simply swipe left or right to have access to features otherwise requires more clicks.

Some comments (in Chinese) on the app’s iTunes Store page were criticizing the app for literally ripping off the original Path without any innovation or improvement.