Evolution of social media in China [Infographic]

Six months ago Ogilvy‘s China social media team created an infographic to show some of the local platforms thriving in place of the major international equivalents.

Since then, new social media platforms have become relevant – on both sides of the Great Firewall – and so the team reworked the infographic. They have also widened the scope to include more platforms within some of the categories.

Major changes include:

Three new categories: professional social networks, which may become more important with LinkedIn’s China future still uncertain, mobile chat, and online music.

GroupOn’s Chinese platform: Although just launched, if their planned investment is anything to go by and they get over some of their initial obstacles, GroupOn China is likely to become a major player in the next few months.

Quora: Although different to Yahoo Answers, which it replaced, Quora is now the Q and A platform everybody is talking about. On the China side we have included its direct equivalent, Zhihu, as well as Baidu Zhidao and Tianya Wenda, which are more like Yahoo Answers.

More Tencent: This Chinese internet giant has been given a lot more face than last time, with the addition of their microblog and the highly populated but relatively inactive Qzone.

Making graphics like this is, of course, far from an exact science. Many of the changes are debatable and the Chinese equivalents also have very different features from their equivalents. Inevitably, there is also the difficulty relating to category crossovers.