IBM Launches Chinese SNS For IT Professionals

IBM has announced the launch of its first Chinese-language vertical social networking site, My developerWorks, targeting Chinese software developers and information technology professionals.

The new site is the Chinese version of IBM’s My developerWorks product, which has already been launched in other countries and languages. Based on IBM’s corporate network and technologies, My developerWorks is a professional network and unified set of community tools for connecting, sharing, and collaborating. It provides services such as blogs, forums, groups, and wikis for people to solve technical problems, lend knowledge to a group project, or soak up wisdom from experts. Since the launch of the worldwide version of My developerWorks in 2009, it claims to have gained 325,000 active users and an average increase of over 1,000 newly registered users daily.

Apart from the functions of traditional social networking sites, the Chinese version of My developerWorks also integrates data from IBM’s developer community and provides industry articles, tutorials, code and skill kits to meet the needs of users.

Unlike Chinese and international social networking sites such as Kaixin001.com, Renren.com, Facebook, and Twitter, a vertical social networking site usually focuses on a particular industry and targets users that are interested in this particular segment sector. Moreover, the largest difference between IBM’s Chinese version My developerWorks and other websites is that it is a non-profit site. IBM hopes to establish this site as a value-added and service platform for its other businesses.