Xiaonei Apps vs Facebook Apps

A few days ago, Xiaonei, the most successful Chinese copy of facebook(so far) launched their developer platform. As social times reported, they kicked off an application competition with a total of 300,000 RMB, which is around $40,000(According to the official website, The first gets 100,000RMB, 5 second prize share 100,000RMB, and 10 third prize share another 100,000RMB). There is no doubt that Xiaonei's move is a smart move. They've been copying all facebook's feature so far except developer platform. It's now under the testing phase, and will become public in late June. In order to make your apps available by people, currently you need to apply for a permit.

Now, It's really interesting to get into Xiaonei to see what's out there. As a native Chinese, let me show you some of the apps I discovered. As you may already thought about, yes, it's pretty much a copy competition of the Facebook apps.

There are two copies of Rockyou's famous app "Likeness".





The basic idea is to send survey to friends to say their similarity.

Another popular copy is 6waves's 型男vs索女(cute boys vs pretty girls). Potentially this is quite possible to be popular in Xiaonei, because a lot of the xiaonei user's use it to find date, or to the simplest, to find pretty boys and girls.








Something funny here is, the above app even copies 型男vs索女's user profile as in their front page. The girl currently ranks No.1 in 型男vs索女.

For a long time, I don't really like people copy stuff from US to China, from Google(Baidu), to Youtube(Tudou, Youku), to Facebook(Xiaonei), to Twitter(Fanfou). However, time proves that they do work in China. Let's see what will happen this time. I guess it will pretty much become a competition of speed, a game that who copies fast, who wins.

I know there are many people in China, many of my friends, who are innovative, who are willing to do innovation. I hope they could do something to surprise the world, maybe next time. Let's fight!