From the World’s Perspective:
| World | China | Notes |
| No | After Renren’s demise, China no longer has an open, real-name, all-in-one social platform | |
| No | ||
| X/Twitter | Weibo（微博） | Weibo’s content is semi-closed loop, while X/Twitter is open |
| Messenger/WhatsApp/Telegram | WeChat (only chatting part) | |
| YouTube | BiliBili（哔哩哔哩） | YouTube doesn’t have BiliBili’s signature pop-up feature, and it has ads. Its 4K videos are free, and YouTube’s audience is all-ages, while BiliBili’s is mainly young people. |
| TikTok | Douyin（抖音）、Kuaishou（快手） | Although Douyin and TikTok are developed and operated by a Chinese company called ByteDance, they are actually two different apps. And you can’t access TikTok from mainland China. |
| No | ||
| Douban (only group part)、Tieba | Reddit’s content is open, while Douban’s content is closed. | |
| Quora | Zhihu (only Q&A part) | |
| No | ||
| Snapchat | No |
From Chinese Perspective:
| China | World | Notes |
| 1）Chat: Messenger、WhatsApp、Telegram 2）Discover: Instagram+Facebook, X（Twitter）,Linkedin 3) Official Account: Medium | 1) WeChat Discover is a closed-loop social network, which is equivalent to Instagram in privacy mode. 2) The main function of WeChat Discover is to send pictures, which is comparable to Instagram; the other is to forward links, which is comparable to Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin. WeChat Discover does not encourage sending plain text. 3) WeChat Official Account can also be compared to the world’s various news magazine aggregator APP and RSS feed reader, but the latter does not belong to the category of social media. Official Account is also a closed-loop network that cannot be retrieved in public search engines, whereas Medium is open. | |
| Weibo（微博） | X/Twitter | Weibo is semi-closed loop, while Twitter is open |
| Bilibili（哔哩哔哩） | YouTube | YouTube doesn’t have Bilibili’s signature pop-up feature and it has ads. Its 4K videos are free. YouTube’s audience is all-ages, while Bilibili is mainly young. |
| Douyin（抖音）, Kuaishou（快手）, Wechat Stories（微信视频号） | TikTok、Instagram Reel | Although Douyin and TikTok are developed and operated by a Chinese company called ByteDance, they are actually two different apps. And you can’t access TikTok from mainland China. |
| RedNote（小红书） | Lemon8 | The UI of RedNote is very similar to Pinterest. Many media outlets describe RedNote as China’s Instagram, which is not accurate. Lemon8 is also operated by the company, Barcode Jumping. |
| Douban（豆瓣） | 1）Posts：X/Twitter 2）Group：Reddit 3）Books：Goodreads 4）Movies：IMDB | Douban’s posts and group features are closed-loop, while Facebook and Reddit are open. |
| Tieba（贴吧） | 1）Q&A：Quora 2）Articles：Medium |
Thoughts
Through the above two summary tables, we can find some interesting phenomena:
Firstly, all Chinese mainstream apps can be compatible with world mainstream Apps, but four world mainstream apps cannot be connected to a Chinese mainstream app. Among them, Renren has failed, Linkedin has abandoned its social features in China due to Chinese government regulation. As a result, China’s Internet does not have an all-in-one social platform (Facebook), a picture-sharing-based social platform (Instagram), a workplace information-based social platform (Linkedin), or a privacy-based chat platform. By the way, almost all of the world’s major chat software supports “end-to-end encryption”, which means that even network operators and service providers can’t read users’ chat records, but WeChat doesn’t and can’t support this feature.
Second, WeChat, Douban, and some other Chinese mainstream apps have added a variety of different features to themselves that are virtually non-existent in the world’s mainstream apps. This means that the world’s mainstream apps can develop more refined and innovative features with more specialization. For example, WeChat’s Discover is very simple and has not changed much in the last decade or so. Douban Group’s features are also very simple and not comparable to a specialized platform like Reddit.
Third, there is an obvious closed-loop phenomenon in China’s mainstream apps. That is, the content on the app is not searchable on public search engines (e.g. Google, Baidu), but only within the app. Moreover, apps such as WeChat Discovery, Offical Account, and RedNote do not have a fully functioning web version, and Douban’s web version is unusable, which means that one has to use their apps. this creates a fragmentation of Internet content within China.
Fourth, although China has a strict ID policy at the regulatory level, none of the social media platforms have a real-name environment: the vast majority of Facebook users are “real-name users,” meaning they use their real names, as do most Instagram users. This atmosphere does not exist in China.
Fifth, the lack of a real-name, all-in-one social networking platform like Facebook has had a profound effect on the difference between China and the rest of the world.
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