Social Media in China: The Top 5 Chinese Social Networks You Need to Know

China currently has about 630 million Internet users, who typically spend 25 hours a week connected to the Internet, either on their laptop or their phone, according to China’s top Internet regulator Lu Wei, at China Internet conference. During these 25 hours, the Chinese netizens watch a lot of multimedia content and are very active on social network sites in China. That’s why more and more brands are using social media in China to market their products.

It is the country with the most social networks and the most social media users recorded. The number of interaction and daily users could be considered out of the chart for some countries. Although they are often competing, many of these networks meet a particular demand that allows a large part of them to coexist. There is, therefore, a much more fragmented market than in the West with unrivaled dominance of Facebook.

Here are the top 5 Chinese social apps and social networks

Wechat: The top social media in China

Created by the Tencent group, WeChat is primarily an instant messaging social media app for mobile phones. What quickly made its success has been the ability to transmit short voice messages of no more than a minute. Wechat was the first of its kind to have this feature. The star network of the Tencent group is a closed network: the user can only see what the people he has in his contact list post and vice versa. The user can share “moments”. These are small posts that can contain text, images, links or videos. (read more about Wechat Marketing here and Wechat marketing campaigns here).

Very versatile, this option allows broadcasting real-time content on the user’s activity, what he loves, where he goes, and his opinions on a wide variety of subjects, but only with his circle of social media friends. WeChat is now much more, with an increasing number of available features that turn Wechat into a multi-purpose platform: banking services, e-commerce, payment services, cab calling, gaming among others. This social media in China network currently has 400 million active user and 600 registered worldwide (source thenextweb.com et wechat) .

Why WeChat will continue to be popular?

1. A number of constantly growing users to continue being the top social media in China
2. Constant evolution of its services that have always been well received by WeChat’s users
3. Widening its spread by going into other markets

Meilishuo

“Talk about beauty” in Chinese, is a community social media website specializing in women’s fashion. The Chinese can find everything about the latest China Internet trends in fashion, cosmetics, shoes and accessories.

Meilishuo is:

• 150 million of registered users
• 3.2 million of daily users
• 164 million page views daily

source : official Meilishuo website

Women between 20 and 35 years and women called “white-collar ” are most interested in Meilishuo. According to figures from the community website, 35 % of users come from cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and those in fast-developing regions such as Jiangsu.

This is both an independent e-commerce website and a community website that allows its users to share tips, user experiences and good places to buy the latest clothes or cosmetics.

Why will this community platform continue to be popular?

The future is in m-commerce, and Meilishuo understands this very well with its well-developed mobile app.

The site has made a partnership with Tencent. This partnership will undoubtedly increase its user base drastically .

Qyer

This site’s turf is e-tourism, suggestions and information gathering for Chinese tourists to be more accurate. Since its opening in 2004, Qyer has reached 10 million users with 5 million mobile application users (source : Qyer). Earlier this year, the largest group of e-commerce in China, Alibaba invested in Qyer to complement its travel division, Taobao Travel, and to expand its range of services available to users.

Why this community site will continue to be a hit?

Big investment on the part of Alibaba, which will give a boost to the development of Qyer and its app. This is crucial given that the future of e-tourism is in m-tourism. A good synergy effect between the different companies owned by the e-commerce behemoth.

Didi dache

Didi Dache is an app to call a taxi. The market of taxi apps remains relatively small in China with Didi and Dache Kuadi Dache owning together close to 100 % market share. At first Kuadi Dache is poised to excel this year, but Didi Dache has two advantages on its side:

• A huge investment of $ 700 million, (7 times its annual income).
• A partnership with Tencent that has integrated the app’s services into its flagship network WeChat. With 21 million taxi calls made during the first month of this integration, Didi Dache will be more than ready to fight this year.

What about Weibo and social media in China?

The “Champion” of Chinese social networks was the hot network these past few years. Yet with the recently uncovered zombies users businesses created to inflate accounts statistics, (millions in some cases), this champion wavers. Research revealed that a fraction of the registered users created 94% of the quality content.

This bad press around Weibo is accompanied by a growing disinterest on the part of users. These users prefer other networks such as WeChat that are not clogged with ads. Is Weibo really on the path to obscurity?  The social media landscape in China changes very quickly. Two years ago, who would have thought that Weibo would be on its way to decline or at least need to undergo deep transformations?

And we are not even talking about all the new Chinese social networks that have spawned all over the place within those two years or even China search engine Baidu’s social network. When you market in China you need to deeply analyze the social media in China market to find the most appropriate social marketing avenues. As well as those networks with a future and growing user base. And those networks which have no future or on the decline even though at the time you start your marketing campaign they appear to be very appropriate social networks.

Photo by MF Evelyn on Unsplash