Sohu launches White Society social network

The SNS, called Bai Shehui, or ‘White Society’, has opened for user registration at the domain Bai.Sohu.com. According to reports, its target audience is young and mature professionals and will take on independent SNS sites such as 51.com, Xiaonei.com and Kaixin001.com.

The Bai Shehui follows the launch of an SNS site by Tencent in January and comes ahead of a planned launch by Sina, China’s largest portal.

Like other SNS, Sohu’s site will include access to blogs, friend profiles, photo services, games and other applications.

According to Chinese reports, Sohu executives say they have an edge over competing sites because of Sohu’s brand name and because it will tap into its pool of existing portal users. Among its competitors, 51.com claims 130 million users, and Xiaonei and Kaixin001 have between 30 and 50 million apiece.

Lawrence Wan, general manager of OMG Digital in China, said that despite the increasingly crowded market of SNS players in China, Sohu is entering the fray at precisely the right time because “the reality is that the market is not that big yet, and there is no one gorilla that has a hold on the market.”

Wan added that the internet’s environment on a whole is also shifting, pointing to users who choose to chat over Facebook. “What happened to instant messenger? Sohu sees this is happening and has to get into this because it’s the future of where we’re all going. The internet and communication isn’t going to be the same as it has been.”

Senior analyst at BDA Connect Jiao Jie agrees Sohu has a real chance to differentiate itself from already established competitors. Jie said Sohu has an established base as a news portal and can use this to its advantage above other SNS that have a base in sports and entertainment.

“I think the market right now is crowded with several other sites but Sohu has its own user base based on its portal site. If it can provide some attractive services, I think it still could be successful,” she said, adding that Sohu also needed to focus on the communication and interaction experiences of its SNS users. “It should provide services related to the community. It already has online video services on its portal that will be easy to transfer and maintain its brand on an SNS.”