10 Chinese Social Video-Sharing Apps to Watch in 2012

As so often happens in the Chinese web landscape, there’s already a very healthy amount of competition amongst what some people think will be the hottest type of app in 2012: social video-sharing apps. Or, to put it another way: “microvideo” apps.

These apps capture short videos of fun things that are happening to you, and let you share them to microblog sites like Sina Weibo. Many Chinese-made apps of this kind also feature video-filters so that you can stylize your mini cinematic exploits as well. Among the competition, users can pick out which app best suits their needs based on what kind of a social network it involves, which services it can sync/share to, and how much they can customize their clips.

Here are the ten main social video-sharing apps coming out of China right now: seven are from startups, three from major web companies. In each instance, click on the red-highlighted name of the app to get it from its homepage:

WeiPai

Video upload limit: 3 minutes
Apps for iOS and Android
Video filters: Yes

The first such social video app that I tried was this one, Weipai. Now maturing nicely into a social network filled with young, smartphone-toting users, its iOS app is looking well polished and already up to v3.0. But, very bizarrely, its Android app is buggy and very rough, left pretty much abandoned since it came out last summer. With more Chinese on Android than iOS by some metrics, that seems like an unwise choice.

WeiKu

Video upload limit: 30 seconds
App for iOS only (with Android in the works)
Video filters: Yes

We looked at Weiku quite recently, and found that it decided to limit videos to just 30 seconds in length. The app developers apparently believing that was quite enough time for your friend to show his no-hands biking or for your cat to look adorable. On top of that it has built a mini-social network (as have most of these apps) where you can browse video missives from fellow users of the app.

iSheHui

Video upload limit: None
Apps for iOS and Android
Video filters: Yes

The two founders of iShehui snagged funding from Cyberagent Ventures back in February that amounted to 10 million RMB (US$1.59 million). The company claims that its app has been downloaded just over two million times, and it features the usual array of fellow members’ videos to browse and several methods of sharing your videos.

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