Baidu’s Discussion Forum, Tieba, Gets an Android App

Baidu’s (NASDAQ:BIDU) lively discussion forum portal, Tieba (meaning ‘Post Bar’ in Chinese) – which is the closest thing the search engine has to a social success – gets its own Android app today (pictured above). The Tieba app features bookmarking, multi-account sign-in, and an improved reading layout. Previously, Android users had to make do with a web app in the browser.

There’s no word, yet, of an iOS version – but that has been the pattern recently at Baidu, which has been pushing hard on Android, which so many young users are now adopting. Currently, Baidu has 14 apps in the official Android Market, including its Ting streaming music app; although this new Tieba arrival has not yet appeared there.

Just yesterday we saw Baidu make another investment in Android when it acquired the Chinese start-up PhotoWonder, which makes an Instagram-like app and social network called PhotoSola.

It’s conceivable that all these standalone apps will come baked-in to Baidu Yi, the Android-powered mobile OS that it announced earlier this summer.

Tieba started in 2003, and is perhaps the largest user-generated content site in the world, where tens of millions (or hundreds of millions?) of people post amusing or reflective posts and engage in silly or serious debates. It’s not as structured or broad as, say, Kaixin or Renren (NYSE:RENN), but it’s still proving popular, even in the age of Weibo.

If you want to try out the Tieba Android app, it’s up on HiAPK, a third-party download site.