Is Ushi.cn the ‘Next Best Brand’ for online networking in China?
Ushi means ‘outstanding professionals’ in Chinese, with a double meaning of ‘competitive advantange’.
It is invitation only, so I got introduced by one of my LinkedIn buddies and joined Ushi.cn. I have been wondering lately whether this will be one field again on the Internet that a Chinese company will beat foreign parties as well. Think of Google losing from Baidu and Ebay from Taobao.com. Does Ushi.cn has the right strategy and features to be the number 1 social networking site in China and beat LinkedIn.com? Lets have a closer look with me.
Founders of Ushi.cn
Started February 2010
Ushi.cn is not founded by some bright Internet nerds. Well, the founders are certainly smart, since Ushi.cn is started by CEO Dominic Penaloza together with 6 Chinese entrepreneurs and 100 ‘chartered’ founders that have connected their name and reputation to the concept.
Peneloza, a Chinese serial entrepreneur grown up in Canada, was also founder of Worldfriends.tv, a cross-cultural travel social networking service where you can meet travel friends and explore the world.
Have a look at some of the names of the co-founders of Ushi.cn:
Other founders of Ushi.cn
- Fan Bao (CEO): an investment banker and founder of Renaissance Partners. Mr. Bao was Chief Strategy Office of AsiaInfo Holding (Chinese IT company listed on NASDAQ) and worked for Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse.
- San Eng: founding partner of SMC Guolian RMB Fund and head of Private Equity for SMC in China. SMC is a leading alternative asset investment firm which has managed over US$ 1 Billion in assets.
- William Chen: managing partner of DT Capital Partners. Chen is a Harvard graduate and founded Accelerrgy, an R&D technology company that develops advanced materials for alternative energy applications and Onepage an enterprise software company that developed a suite of portal products and management tools for the corporate market.
- Dr. Jovan Hsu: founder and partner of venture capitalists The Chinese Founder Fund. He earlier started Chinbid.com which was merged with Eachnet.com and later acquired by Ebay
- Bill Liao: an Australian entrepreneur who has participated in seven IPO’s. Co-founder of German networking site for professionals Xing.com.
- Raymond Yang: founder of Taishan Invest, one of the financers of Ushi.cn.
Ushi.cn is doing pretty good so far
Smart first move with the 100 chartered members. Quality members for a networking site is very important and these 100 very influential China business people with International allure have started on Ushi.cn and most importantly: they are active on it. This high quality members base with people everyone wants to connect with manages to attract a lot of people.
Their mission is simple: to become the #1 networking site for professionals in China. In a 1.6 billion crowded country where people generally will not do business with you after building a genuine relationship during several dinners and drinks, called ‘Guanxi’ in China, the market potential is huge. We already had the Facebooks of China such as Renren.com and Kaixin001.com and the MSN Messenger of China, QQ but no similar site for LinkedIn.com.
Well, not a site of the potential to become the Chinese LinkedIn.com. We have seen concepts like Tianji.com and Wealink.com that are professional networking sites as well, but not with the driving force of a quality user base like Ushi.cn. I think this is the number 1 USP for Ushi.cn. You know, a networking drink in the fanciest bar is nothing when no influential people attend…
China is in my opinion big enough for its own professional networking website and Chinese people still prefer to communicate in Chinese. Linkedin is not in Chinese. So Ushi.cn started successfully in February 2010 with this user base and now has about 20.000 users.
Key features of Ushi.cn
Not that many just yet
When looking at Ushi.cn you notice immediately that it is ‘inspired’ by LinkedIn to say the least 
The look and feel is the same, with the white blue logo and website template.
Even the usability is the same, pay attention to the navigation menus in the upper right corner and the side panels. So to review the features with of Ushi.cn it is best to compare it with LinkedIn.com. But first some info at a glance for you:
1. The team behind Ushi.cn is mainly Chinese to have good understanding of the market
2. Ushi.cn aims to facilitate Guanxi in China, they know it will never replace it.
3. Right now about 70% of the members is Chinese, the rest are expats or foreigners. Majority from the biggest business cities Beijing and Shanghai.
4. It is a bilingual website. If you get invited in English your Ushi.cn will be in English. Otherwise in Chinese
Ushi.cn compared to LinkedIn
Ok, lets compare the Ushi.cn features with LinkedIn…….well there are not many features on Ushi.cn that are unique just yet. Basically it is a clone of LinkedIn, which is not a bad thing, why reinvent the wheel?
1. Ushi.cn is invite only. I got mine from LinkedIn
2. People you may know suggestions
3. Find friends by email (MSN, Gmail, Outlook and Chinese web mails)
4. Import friends from contacts on computer or Xing.com (another LinkedIn clone from Germany, of Ushi.cn co-founder Bill Liao)
5. Start and join groups managed by members
6. There is no advertising yet on the website. Focus is on increasing user base. Inside information tells they are working on an advertising model.
7. Micro blogging feature: you can follow members or it displays all updates by default
8. No Job section on it (yet)
9. Uses ‘coins’ for services on the website. You can buy them with Internet Banking or with the Chinese Paypal ‘Alipay’. Here is their description:
Ushi Coins are needed to buy services in Ushi. For example, you need to spend Ushi Coins to send a message to Ushi members beyond your first degree Connections. Each message costs 10 Ushi Coins. Messages are the most direct and effective communication method in Ushi. By sending messages, you will be able to get in touch with a vast number of Ushi members. At the same time, the quality of user experience inside Ushi is preserved at a high level
10. It has an iPhone app download
The amount of visitors compared to LinkedIn is of course very little right now. But lets see how the line in the graph below of Ushi.cn will approach that of LinkedIn in the future….
Will Ushi.cn beat LinkedIn in China?
There is a chance….
Right now, Ushi.cn has the functionalities of the earlier versions of LinkedIn. But they are yet 6 months online now, so I am sure they are working on a new release with more cool features as we speak.
If i could recommend anything to Ushi.cn is to integrate with other Internet tools and applications. With tools that LinkedIn also has, like Twitter and WordPress but certainly with China specific tools to gain that competitive advantage over LinkedIn. Think of Chinese micro blogging sites TaoTao.com and Fanfou.com. Give people a reason to choose Ushi.cn over LinkedIn besides the awesome user base. Key is also to keep the quality user base and expand it.
I am on LinkedIn for quite some time right now and I have noticed there are not many very active Chinese members. Most of the Chinese members are looking for or maintaining relationships with people outside China. But what about all the other white-collar workers in China that want to maintain the Guanxi with people in China only? They might all go to Ushi.cn…
I am looking forward to a next release of Ushi.cn with extended features and it will be my pleasure to write about it again. So what do you think about Ushi.cn? Please share your experiences with us if you have used it and vote in our poll.
Finally, if you want an invitation for Ushi.cn, drop me a line and I will sent you an invitation!
UPDATE 31-10-2010
Here are new article about Ushi.cn:
http://venturebeat.com/2010/10/19/professional-social-network-ushi-is-chinas-answer-to-linkedin/
I got this email from Ushi.cn on 22-10-2010:
We’re very happy to announce that Ushi has completed around RMB 10 million in new financing from elite investors. This new financing enables Ushi to accelerate its development of useful services to help you accelerate your career and business success. Details are in the attached press release http://blog.ushi.cn/?p=265
Found this great article about social media brands and equivalents in China. See the picture below:
Ushi.cn is not mentioned…
Read the full post by Thomas Crampton, Asia-Pacific director of 360 Digital Influence for Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide at
http://www.thomascrampton.com/china/social-media-china/
Looking forward to writing about other social media brands in China!
Posted by Che | September 8, 2010, 11:40 pmactually, Linkedin is not mentioned either!
Posted by ttesty | January 10, 2011, 2:44 amGreat article, recently learned about your site and it was a great discovery.
Would love to be able to have a first hand experience of Ushi.cn so I would appreciate it if you could send me an invitation…
Regards
Posted by Gnz | September 13, 2010, 8:10 amreally great article! could I get your invitation to join in Ushi.cn?
thank you very much,
Rose
Posted by rose | December 7, 2010, 11:30 pmthanks for the compliment! I have sent you an invitation
Posted by Che | September 13, 2010, 9:32 amUshi Offline Series EventsⅠ: Let’s spend the night with Ushi Elites!
Date: November 10th,2010 ——December 14th, 2010
Interested in spending an evening with Ushi’s elite professionals? Ushi’s end-of-year cocktail party & concert is the perfect place to meet business celebrities from a variety of industries, including representatives from FM&CM, as well as leaders from selected media companies.Learn more
Between now and 14 December, every time you invite someone new to join Ushi, you will win a ticket to our end-of-year cocktail party & concert.
How to Participate:
Simply invite your friends to join Ushi before the event’s closing date, and make sure their registrations are successful (their profile completeness should be above 50%). The top 5 members will become our “Ushi’s Top 5 Inviters”.
Furthermore, if you successfully invite 5 friends to join Ushi, you’ll gain an opportunity to enter a lucky draw. The draw will last for 5 weeks, during this period we’ll draw 2 “Lucky Ushi Members” every week.
Awards:
Ushi’s Top 5 Inviters
1.
Participate in “Ushi’s Cocktail Party”, and have a face to face conversation with Ushi’s Founding and Charter Members.
2.
Two tickets for “Elegant Chinese Music of Shanghai – Tang poems and Song ci-poems Appreciation Concert” on December 19th, 2010.
Lucky Ushi Members (10 persons, 2 lucky draw every week)
1. Participate in “Ushi’s Cocktail Party”
2. One ticket for “Elegant Chinese Music of Shanghai – Tang poems and Song ci-poems Appreciation Concert” on December 19th, 2010.
Posted by admin | November 9, 2010, 6:46 pm