After changing how people take photos, Chinese Instagram sets sights abroad

Nice is one of China’s hippest social apps.

Adam Morley from Nice says the photo app began as what can best be described as a “shopping guide dominated by men in Beijing that love shoes.” Nice was born as a collaborative project between Alex Zhou, who had led a career in retail, and Ken Cao, who came from Baidu – so fashion apparel was the natural starting point for Nice’s burgeoning social network.

Nice slowly transitioned out of men’s apparel when it noticed its users becoming more diverse. The app was being used for more varied purposes. Today Nice is looking to expand overseas, and is now mostly used by women. On the development side of things, Nice tries to focus its energies on features that will help its users connect with each other.

Its photo sharing service and integrated tagging system allow tags to be placed anywhere on a photo. There are also stickers.

According to Morley, Nice “started the visual tagging phenomenon that today you will find on dozens of other apps.”

In keeping with its new direction, Nice offers a slew of features designed to put it above the curve and attract new members. Its photo sharing service and integrated tagging system allow tags to be placed anywhere on a photo, adding a compelling layer of interactivity when combined with its powerful sticker customizations.

Another of Nice’s innovations includes its new Tinder-like swiping feature which uses a variety of matching criteria, including location but also tags directly associated with your profile as well as recommended tags on the basis of your tag affiliations. Lastly Nice has now also implemented a direct messaging feature allowing users to communicate in private with other users they come across through tags, in addition to its existing commenting function.

“Other photo based social networks focus more on editing and using tags as decoration whereas we’re using tags to connect people. Basically we’re a back end oriented app when others are front end oriented,” adds Adam.

Reaching for the stars

With a war chest of US$64 million, Nice has ambitions to expand overseas in the future. According to the startup, 10 percent of its total user base already resides outside of China. Nice claims to have seen significant growth in Taiwan, and that Southeast Asia will very likely be the focal point of further expansion.

To date however, few Chinese social networks have seen much traction out of the mainland with a notable exception being Tencent’s WeChat.

Morley stresses that China will still, for the most part, remain the primary focus for the company, given that a majority of its userbase is based there. “Having said that,“ he adds, “due to our organic global growth, we’ve recently built up a global facing team and have already launched separate, less ‘sinicized’ versions for a global audience.”