Amid the glut of Pinterest clones in China, there are some interesting such social pinboard sites that are highly specialist – such as MeiShiXing.
As its Chinese name implies, it focuses totally on food, allowing users to photograph, describe, check-in to restaurants and cafés, and share their culinary experiences. Curiously, the startup behind MeiShiXing launched it with apps for iOS and Android (pictured below) a few months ago, but the website that you see above launched only this past weekend. The new website gives a nice overview of the now considerable collection of entries, but most of the action at the users’ end is still going on in the mobile apps. The web app seems more like a good way to browse things, with the ubiquitous option to share items of interest to Weibo, Renren, etc. Rather than a ‘like’ button, there’s a more apt ‘I wanna eat’ icon to hit.
MeiShiXing.com is a blend, then, of social pinboard, SNS, and location-based service (LBS), thereby making it something of a competitor to check-in service, Jiepang. It’s equipped for six major Chinese cities at the moment, so its rollout is certainly nowhere near nationwide – but the LBS element will inevitably require more care and data to be applied so that venues are already listed.
At the moment, there’s no clear way for the site to monetize, but restaurant and other merchant tie-ups seem like the best way forward. In contrast, fashion-oriented Pinterest clones, such as Renren’s (NYSE:RENN), can bring in cash more immediately by driving traffic to e-commerce sites such as Alibaba’s Taobao.
Currently, MeiShiXing is invite-only, indicating that it’s not wanting to rush the opening-up process. If you have an invite code, new users can sign in with either their Sina or Tencent Weibo accounts.
[Source: Tech2IPO - article in Chinese]