More Chinese Companies to Launch Path-like Service

Tencent and Kaixin001 are about to launch their own approach to Path’s acquaintance-focused social networking service, according to people familiar with the matter.

Witnessed the noise made by the launch of Path 2.0 in late last year, Kaixin001 stealthily started working on something similar from last December on, people who broke the news said, and now it’s show time.

As for Tencent, it was also rumored to introduce features inspired by Path into the newest version of its wild popular mobile IM app Weixin, which just topped 100 million users.

We wrote couple days ago a Beijing-based team made available an app dubbed Diandi with mixed comments, most of which criticized the app for literally ripping off the original Path with zero innovation.

screenshot of Diandi, a Chinese Path clone

General social networking service like Renren, Kaixin001 and Tencent Pengyou together gobbled a large chunk of the market leaving minor competitors with little room to grow within. The arrival of Path and its disruptive concept of promoting life sharing between only people who you’re familiar with certainly served as an enlightenment for Chinese players who were looking to “jump out of the box”.

Kaixin001 experimented with many sidekick products last year with not so rosy outcome, and since the site started as a non real name SNS, it remains to be seen that how many people could be persuaded into using the new initiative.