When we talk about social media sites, we tend to focus on a number of well-known examples – Facebook, YouTube, and so forth. Yet there are many international social media sites of all kinds. This post is written by Jenny Luo, who is studying Electrical Power Engineering at Bath and works part-time at UKOLN. In it, she looks at some examples of social media sites in China, compares them to other popular sites, and collects together information about the sites’ APIs.<\/p>\n
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1. renren<\/strong><\/p>\n Renren means “people and people”. Renren is very similar to Facebook, not only in terms of function but also in terms of interface. You\u00a0need to register on this website first ,then you can add somebody else as your\u00a0 friends. You can\u00a0upload some photos, write diaries, share videos, add some comments or delete some comments.There are\u00a0also some online games. Anyway, it’s almost the same as Facebook. But, in my opinion British tend to share more pictures than the Chinese do.<\/p>\n Link:<\/strong> www.renren.com<\/a> 2. douban<\/strong><\/p>\n Douban means “watercress”. On this website you will feel free to comment on any \u00a0books, films, and music.\u00a0You can find others’ recommendations about books, films and music.\u00a0Everything shown on your douban webpage can be chosen by yourself.\u00a0For example, if you are a mother the website will recommend you some recipes. Unlike Renren, which is mainly used by\u00a0college students, this website focuses on all kinds of people, they will help you find friends from what you like, then you can find more things you like from them. It has more than 5,000,0000 users now.<\/p>\n Link:<\/strong> www.douban.com 3. kaixin001<\/strong><\/p>\n The website’s name means ‘having fun’. It was set up in 2008. Till now, it has about 110 million registered users. This website mainly focuses on the urban white collar. This website has 3 main functions, such as ‘basic tools’, ‘social games’, and ‘other applications’. For example, in ‘other applications’ you can get a weather forecast, a service for buying tickets online, and many other practical applications.<\/p>\n Link:<\/strong> http:\/\/www.kaixin001.com\/<\/a> 1. Sina Webblog<\/strong><\/p>\n ‘Sina’ is not a a Chinese word, I asked baidu about why it got this name, and it says that it means China in Latin<\/a>. Sina Webblog is the most popular and also mainstream blogging service in China.\u00a0It\u00a0includes amusement celebrities’ blogs,\u00a0intellectual celebrities’ blogs, sensibility blogs, and common people blogs.<\/p>\n Link:<\/strong> http:\/\/blog.sina.com.cn\/<\/a> 2. SoHu Webblog<\/strong><\/p>\n ‘So’ means ‘ searching’\u00a0 ‘Hu’ means ‘ ‘fox’. So the name means ‘search a fox’. It’s similar to the sina’s but not as popular as the one above.<\/p>\n Link:<\/strong> http:\/\/blog.sohu.com\/<\/a> 1. Sina Microblogging<\/strong><\/p>\n Sina Microblogging is very similar to twitter.You can also call it ‘one sentence’ blogging. Users can send messages from mobile phones’ SMS messaging functions, WAP, Internet, or MMS.You can send what you hear, see, and think immediately. Your friends can also see what you sent immediately and add some comments. It has the most users of all Chinese microblogging services, and public celebrity is its character.Sina microblogging invite stars and celebrities to be users and will authenticate them. After authentication,a ‘character “V”‘ will be added after their names to\u00a0distinguish them from common users.<\/p>\n Link:<\/strong> http:\/\/weibo.com\/<\/a> 2. SoHu microblogging.<\/strong><\/p>\n It’s very similar to the one above, but not as popular as the above.<\/p>\n Link:<\/strong> http:\/\/t.sohu.com\/<\/a> 1. QQ<\/strong><\/p>\n This name means cute because its symbol is a little penguin.This software support online chatting, video chatting, sending documents, sharing documents, qq email, Netdisk. You can also join some groups which are built by the qq users. For instance,if you like yoga, you can join a yoga group, and you can chat with the people in this group. It’s the most widely used chatting software in China.<\/p>\n Link:<\/strong> www.qq.com 2. MSN<\/strong><\/p>\n No more introduction, but not as popular as qq in China<\/p>\n Link:<\/strong>http:\/\/cn.msn.com\/<\/a> 1. YOUKU<\/strong><\/p>\n This name means ‘you are so cool’. A very popular video sharing website in China, founded in 2006. In 2007, it launched an activity called ‘LOMO is everywhere’, and turned out to be very successful. It’s also a website which gathers lots and lots of people who like to share their videos.<\/p>\n Link:<\/strong> www.youku.com 2. Tudou<\/strong><\/p>\n Its name means ‘potato’. You can upload, download, and share videos through this website.<\/p>\n Link:<\/strong> www.tudou.com 1. babidou<\/strong><\/p>\n ‘Babidou’ I don’t know its meaning actually. But I think this name sounds good in Chinese and may mean\u00a0‘some interesting beans’. \u00a0Babidou internet photo album\u00a0Internet Save centre was founded in 2005. Babidou specially serves Internet business. Almost all its photos are from taobao, yiqu, paipai, some large Internet shopping Websites. It has a strong documents management system,\u00a0and a humanistic operator interface. Very easy and convenient to use and totally free.<\/p>\n Link:<\/strong> www.babidou.com 2. bababian<\/strong><\/p>\n ‘bababian’ means ‘change’. This website imitates flicker.It has two subsites, one is for Internet shops, the other is for individual photo albums.<\/p>\n Link:<\/strong> www.bababian.com 1. jia This <\/strong> 2. bshare.cn <\/strong><\/p>\n bshare is also a social sharing web2.0 button tool.<\/p>\n Link:<\/strong> www.bshare.cn\/index 3. Baidu share<\/strong><\/p>\n This is almost as same as the tools above.<\/p>\n link:<\/strong> http:\/\/share.baidu.com\/<\/a> 1. taobao<\/strong><\/p>\n ‘Taobao’ means ‘finding treasure’ in Chinese. Taobao is the biggest online retailer in Asia Pacific.It was funded by alibaba enterprise in 2003.Its business include c2c( person to person) and B2C( Business to person). By 2008, its registed member is more than 98million and represented about 80% of China on line trade, and its turnover reached 41.3billion yuan.<\/p>\n Link:<\/strong> www.taobao.com 1. meituan<\/strong><\/p>\n Meituan means ‘Shopping happily in group’. This group shopping website is funded by the same company that funded\u00a0Renren. Meituan\u00a0reccomends you a qualified life service everyday. Its recommendation must be of excellent quality and reasonable value.<\/p>\n Link:<\/strong> www.meituan.com A general overview of lots of Chinese social media sites, including many not covered here, can be found at: http:\/\/www.bshare.cn\/share<\/a>. English speakers might prefer to read it through Google Translate (Click here for a translation<\/a>).<\/p>\n
\nAPI:<\/strong> http:\/\/www.programmableweb.com\/api\/renren<\/a>
\nDescription\uff1a<\/strong> This\u00a0is an\u00a0open platform based on OpenSocial<\/p>\n
\nAPI:<\/strong> http:\/\/www.douban.com\/service\/apidoc\/reference\/<\/a>
\nDescription:<\/strong> The weblink given above is the instruction of API utilisation. The Douban API follows the Atom and GData principles. When addition or deletion operations are used, OAuth certification would be required. Then, there are also\u00a0lots of instructions about how to use the API to acquire different information.<\/p>\n
\nAPI:<\/strong> http:\/\/wenku.baidu.com\/view\/671f256e1eb91a37f1115c5a.html<\/a>
\nDescription:<\/strong> The link given above is the instruction\u00a0of \u00a0kaixinoo1 API. This API support java,\u00a0PHP, NET and a variety of kinds of programming language. Kaixin API uses a REST connection. All the Kaixin open platforms are achieved by using HTTP POST to send requests to http:\/\/rest.kaixinoo1.com\/api\/rest.php<\/a>\u00a0The following instructions are about Users API, Friends API, actions API and so on.<\/p>\nBlogging (similar to Blogger)<\/h2>\n
\nAPI:<\/strong> http:\/\/blog.csdn.net\/<\/a>\u7528\u6237\u540d\/services\/metablogapi.aspx
\nDescription:<\/strong> The\u00a0link above is found in a message board. It seems that till now sina blog haven’t provided public access to their API. The Chinese character in the link above means user\u00a0name.<\/p>\n
\nAPI:<\/strong> http:\/\/ow.blog.sohu.com\/guide#11<\/a>
\nDescription:<\/strong> Sohu open widget(SOW) is proposed by sohu company, which is based on the UWA (Universal Widget API) principle, applied on many platform’s Widget standards. A brief introduction about SOW follows. Firstly, it’s based on a standard Widget principle — the UWA principle. Secondly, everyone can use this to develop their own Widget, and share it to multiple net friends, adding to their sohu blog for utilisation. Then there are loads of information about how to apply.<\/p>\nMicroblogging services (similar to Twitter)<\/h2>\n
\nAPI:<\/strong> http:\/\/open.weibo.com\/wiki\/API%E6%96%87%E6%A1%A3_V2#.E5.BE.AE.E5.8D.9A<\/a>
\nDescription:<\/strong> The link above is a introduction to the sina microblog API. This documentation contains detailed information about the reading and writing of\u00a0Microblog, users, comments, relationships, accounts, topics, searching, registration, and so on. Some of them are signed by a red Chinese character, which means this is high class permission, and can only be used by making an application.<\/p>\n
\nAPI:<\/strong> http:\/\/open.t.sohu.com\/en\/%E9%A6%96%E9%A1%B5<\/a>
\nDescription:<\/strong> This link above is instructions for how to use the sohu API. They give some English labels.<\/p>\nInstant Messaging\u00a0(similar to MSN)<\/h2>\n
\nAPI:<\/strong> http:\/\/wiki.opensns.qq.com\/wiki\/%E3%80%90QQ%E7%99%BB%E5%BD%95%E3%80%91Qzone_OAuth2.0%E7%AE%80%E4%BB%8B<\/a>
\nDescription:<\/strong> The link above has these contents. 1, a brief introduction to qq zone OAuth 2.0. 2,The procedures involved in using qq zone OAuth2.0. Step1: How to acquire access-token, qqzone. OAuth 2.0 provide different log-in checking and authorization procedures for website, mobile application and desktop. Now they provide 2 ways to acquire an access token. 1.server-side mode. 2. client side-mode. The two modes\u00a0 only have differences in acquiring an access-token, but work similarly in the following steps of acquiring an \u00a0openid and invoking the API. Step 2: Using access-token to get the corresponding openid. Step 3 : using openAPI to get resources. You can also get specific information about API \u00a0from the following link given http:\/\/wiki.opensns.qq.com\/wiki\/%E3%80%90QQ%E7%99%BB%E5%BD%95%E3%80%91API%E6%96%87%E6%A1%A3<\/a><\/p>\n
\nAPI:<\/strong> http:\/\/dev.live.com\/messenger\/<\/a><\/p>\nVideo Sharing\u00a0(for example, YouTube)<\/h2>\n
\nAPI:<\/strong> http:\/\/dev.youku.com\/<\/a>
\nDescription:<\/strong> The weblink describes the basic functions of youku’s open API. They are: uploading videos, getting users’ related data, broadcasting which includes\u00a0designing your own player’s appearance.\u00a0Their characteristics are XML or JSON format data, and using Javascript client-side to directly\u00a0insert youku videos without having to add anything on the server-side. Youku API is only open to partners, so a partner ID must be applied for first.<\/p>\n
\nAPI:<\/strong> http:\/\/api.tudou.com\/wiki\/index.php\/%E9%A6%96%E9%A1%B5<\/a>
\nDescription:<\/strong> The link given is a tudou open platform document. Every developer can use a tudou account to login to the open platform and apply for a APP. Every APP has a limited amount of interface requirements. The interface includes functions that require user authorization,\u00a0and others for which user authorization is not needed.<\/p>\nPhoto sites (similar to Flicker)<\/h2>\n
\nAPI:<\/strong> N\/A.
\nDescription: <\/strong>N\/A.<\/p>\n
\nAPI:<\/strong> http:\/\/www.bababian.com\/api\/api.htm<\/a>
\nDescription:<\/strong> This is the open platform link of bababian, but a bababian account is needed to see more detailed information.<\/p>\nSocial bookmarking services (for example Addthis, or Delicious)<\/h2>\n
\n‘jia’ means add in Chinese. Its function is as same as its name. It provides these functions: website link collection, website sharing, and website link sending as well. Users can share everything they want to share to many popular social website by using this tool.
\nLink:<\/strong> www.jiathis.com
\nAPI:<\/strong> http:\/\/www.jiathis.com\/help\/html\/share-with-jiathis-api<\/a>
\nDescription:<\/strong>The link gives a standard jiathis API interface, which make the implementation easier.This link, http:\/\/www.jiathis.com\/send\/?webid=shareID&url=$siteUrl&title=$siteTitle&uid=$uid<\/a> is the standard form, share ID can be gleaned by a ID list. $siteUrl means the weblink that you want to share, $siteTitle means the shared website title which can also be defined by yourself. $uid(\u975e\u5fc5\u987b) is used for data statistics. Four examples are also given.<\/p>\n
\nAPI:<\/strong> http:\/\/www.bshare.cn\/api<\/a>
\nDescription:<\/strong> The link above gives detailed information\u00a0about the API. It’s an open platform.<\/p>\n
\nAPI:<\/strong> http:\/\/open.baidu.com\/<\/a>
\nDescription:<\/strong> The link given above is the website of baidu open platform where you can find the APIs of different baidu applications, such as baidu share, baidu map, baidu encyclopedia.http:\/\/share.baidu.com\/get-codes<\/a>. This link is the specific code of baidu share, and also the instructions for use. You can copy and paste the code given and put it in any position within the webpage between <body> and <\/body>.<\/p>\nOnline Trade (for example, ebay)<\/h2>\n
\nAPI:<\/strong> http:\/\/open.taobao.com\/doc\/api_list.htm?id=102<\/a>
\nDescription:The link given above is an API list of taobao.It has API of users , products, businesses and so on.You can click on what \u00a0you need to get more detailed information.<\/strong><\/p>\nDeal of the day\u00a0(for example: Groupon)<\/h2>\n
\nAPI:http:\/\/www.meituan.com\/help\/api<\/a><\/strong>
\nDescription:The weblink given is meituan API. You can get cities API,and also the daily deals API.<\/strong><\/p>\n