Hainei: Strong Competitor of Facebook Wannabe in China

Written by Tangos on November 15, 2007
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HaineiSeveral of my friends were twittering a new social networking site called Hainei.com today. At first glance, I was thinking it is just another Facebook clone in China. But then I was quite surprised to know who is the founder of Hainei.

Can you believe that it is a new project by Wang Xing, the founder of Xiaonei.com and Fanfou.com. Wang Xing established Xiaonei.com in late 2005, which was acquired by Oak Pacific in Oct 2006. Several months later, Wang Xing left Oak Pacific in early 2007 and then established Fanfou, which is a clone of Twitter. About two weeks ago, I heard that Wang Xing plan to change Fanfou significantly, but I haven’t thought that it means a totally new site.

Back to Hainei, it looks quite similar to Facebook in both features and UI. Hainei, unlike Xiaonei, is not a social networking site focused on universities and colleges, but it also emphasis highly on real name identities. Though Wang Xing said Heinei has yet been ready for public beta, the features of Hainei is quite good already, the previous experience on Xiaonei surely benefits this new project. And of course, Hainei has a twitter-like miniblogging feature inside. Wang Xing also said that many features are under development and will be rolled out soon.

Everybody is talking about the social graph today, and Facebook’s developer platform undoubtedly accelerated the development of Facebook. However, it is unlikely to see such kind of developer platform in Hainei in short term, due to lack of openness environment in China’s Internet industry. Without such eco-system in the industry, Wang Xing may have ability to surprise you by his experience in sns sector. As Alex Dong, founder of Haokanbu, said “I’ve spent some wonderful time with [Wang Xing] in understanding what he has learned in promoting an internet website in China (without doing sex/scandal eye ball catching). It’s true that XiaoNei.com has ’shamelessly’ used FaceBook’s css without even bothering to modify it, but they do have a fascinating ’startup war story’.” I believe the list of Facebook wannabe in China has a new strong challenger now.

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11 Responses to “Hainei: Strong Competitor of Facebook Wannabe in China”

  1. China Web2 On Hainei.com — Meow : Version 3 on November 15th, 2007 4:05 am

    […] China Web2 Review today writes about a startup that my friend Wang Xing,who founded Xiaonei,com (the most popular student networking site in China). Check it out! […]

  2. Kaiser on November 15th, 2007 12:43 pm

    Very interesting! I’ll definitely want to talk to Wang Xing about this–and especially I’ll be curious to know his plans for third-party developers. Thanks for posting this news!

  3. pende on November 23rd, 2007 5:17 pm

    Oh,i don’t think so.Hainei is just a copy of xiaonei.com,

  4. 放羊博客 » Blog Archive » 海内,又一个Facebook？ on November 28th, 2007 11:26 pm

    […] 海内,又一个Facebook？ Posted on 11月 15th, 2007 | by joojen | 今 天从多个途径得知了海内的诞生，有来自于Twitter的消息、好友Email的邀请及CWR的报道等等，让我不得不花点时间去了解它。它给我的第一个感觉就是，这是一个FaceBook中文翻版，而经过一段时间的体验后，发现事实上确实如此，只是功能还没有FaceBook那么强大。 […]

  5. digger on December 4th, 2007 11:17 am

    Recommend a chinese digg site(www.waakee.com), it looks great.

  6. Lee on December 16th, 2007 11:10 am

    www.xiaonei.com is so popular between university students in China!

  7. Cnbloggercon Guide reviewing coverage of China social applications panel - part 4 on December 28th, 2007 9:21 pm

    […] Kaiser adds: “instant messaging and SMS are effectively soaking up much of the demand in China for social networking.” Unlike the US which seems to be heading toward a Facebook social network singularity (the Kango Palo Alto office is about 50 meters from the Facebook cafeteria, so hard not to think that), the China market may be much more fragmented between BBS, IM/chat based communities, social applications based on SMS, collegiate social networks like Xiaonei, Zhanzuo, Hainei, and many other flavors of social applications. […]

  8. Ex-Yahoo China CEO Taking On Facebook, Launches Yiqi : China Web2.0 Review on March 17th, 2008 1:47 pm

    […] Last year, Hainei launched with a focus on real human community. Yiqi seems to be focus on recommendation, in other words, personalized life information. It’s not only competing with new sites like Cityin, but also with veterans like Douban. […]

  9. Hainei Adds Xianguo Hot, A Step to Platform? : China Web2.0 Review on March 31st, 2008 2:17 am

    […] Hainei, an emerging social networking site and a Facebook wannabe in China, just launched a new feature on Saturday, which might be the first step of Hainei’s vision to build an SNS platform. […]

  10. 海内：Facebook的国内竞争者 - 英文站采集 SEO优化 Adsense广告配置 on July 9th, 2008 12:53 am

    […] 今天从多个途径得知了海内的诞生，有来自于Twitter的消息、好友Email的邀请及CWR的报道等等，让我不得不花点时间去了解它。它给我的第一个感觉就是，这是一个FaceBook中文翻版，而经过一段时间的体验后，发现事实上确实如此，只是功能还没有FaceBook那么强大。 […]

  11. Kaixin001: A New SNS with High Growth : China Web2.0 Review on July 16th, 2008 11:15 pm

    […] If we check the Alexa data of Kaixin001.com and Hainei.com, which is a SNS launched in late 2007 and targeted similar market as Kaixin001.com, we found that Kaixin001’s Alexa data has exceeded Hainei since May. Since Alexa data is not reliable, we also use Google Trends for website. It also shows that Kaixin001’s traffic increased quickly and now is close to Hainei’s. […]

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