QQ, Baidu, Kaixin and RenRen top Holaba brand war

QQ receives 77 per cent of votes (7,692 respondents) to top the social networking ranking in China. Baidu’s SNS (6,846 votes) and Kaixin001 (6,711 votes) follows.

The SNS with the least recommendations are 5Gme, Cyword, iPart and Mayi (which has announced it is closing down operations soon).

Respondents rank QQ, Baidu and Kaixin among the most preferred SNS portals in China.  Holaba separately listed QQ, Baidu, RenRen as the top three sites with the highest potential for growth.

From the Holaba survey, people aged 18 or under prefer QQ. Surprisingly, people between 50 to 59 also rate QQ highly. The site attracts a high population of females in the Guandong area.

Kaixin001 is most popular in Central and Eastern China. Southern China counts the least recommendations for the SNS.

RenRen has a high fan base with 21 per cent of the respondents between the ages of 19 to 29. Preference for this site is almost equally distributed geographically in China.

Usage of these SNS also differs. People mainly go on RenRen to friend former classmates. However comments associated with the site include being too commercialised and rumours that a Japanese firm is acquiring RenRen.

Kaixin001 is viewed as a site to kill time with because of the large amount of shared links.

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