Kaixin001

Kaixin001, 开心网; pinyin: Kāixīnwǎng; aka "Happy Net") is a social networking website launched in March , 2008.

In 2010, Kaixin001 ranks as the 13th most popular website in China and 67th overall according to Alexa Internet.

Applications

Kaixin001 cloned and brought the most famous successful Facebook applications to the Chinese Market before anyone else. For example

Friends for Sale: A game that users can price and sell their friends

Happy Farm: Users can grown their own vegetables and steal vegetables from their friends.

Competition

Kaixin001's success can be partly credited to the Great Firewall of China. Due to the permanent blockage of other Social Networking Websites such as Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube since the summer of 2009 following the Ürümqi riots, many Chinese nationals turned to domestic sites, hence the membership spikes.

On 20 May 2009, Kaixin001 formally sued Qianxiang Group for unfair competition. Qianxiang Group runs one of China's popular social networks Renren. It purchased the kaixin.com domain and launched a Kaixin001 clone. This enables Renren to confuse users and attract some Kaixin001 potential users to the Kaixin.com clone. On April 2011, Oak Pacific, owners of Renren, was found by a Chinese court as guilty of violating legal rights of Kaixin001. The compensation sum is still being settles by the Chinese legal system. The other main competition for Kaixin001 is Weibo.com, which is like a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook. Weibo.com has 140 million users and is owned by Sina.com.