Networking Site Ushi.cn - the Chinese LinkedIn

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:

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.

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

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!