Interestingly, a couple of days after I stumbled upon the media report on Foursquare and came up with a paranoid conspiracy theory, I did find the first Chinese clone of Foursquare… No, I’m not promoting myself as sort of oracle or fortune teller. From the look of it, it’s been there for some time, not long, but definitely before April 8th. In fact it seems to be born on March 18th.

The clone, or technically half-clone or double-clone, depends on your perspective, is called 拉手 (la1 shou3, “holding hands”). It’s about 50% Groupon clone, 50% Foursquare clone. You can find the website here.

Sorry, you will have to register to do anything on the website. I’ve tried it a little bit though, and the hands-on report comes as this:

Interesting name. The name of the Foursquare-clone part is “拉手四方” (La1 “holding”, Shou3 “hands”, Si4 “four”, Fang1 “square”). Actually I was thinking 四方 was a good name if Foursquare makes a Chinese manifestation. Four is 四, square makes 方, and combined the two characters mean “everywhere in the world”. Now it seems the initiative is lost. If Lashou has registered the term, there will likely be an unpleasant fight over a simple name. Meanwhile, the “Check-in” function of Foursquare has been mapped into a bilingual term, with English aspect exactly “Check-in” and Chinese facet “踩点”. Coincidentally, this is also what I thought best translation for the function of THE Foursquare. Another initiative lost.

Limited but essential client support. Lashou’s Foursquare-ish client comes on S60, iPhone, and also on web if you don’t have the right phone. Both clients are downloadable on official site, with the iPhone version also available in Apple’s App Store. My HD2 is rendered rather useless in this case, thus all tests has been done on its web version.

The game rules are pretty much the same as Foursquare’s, with extra tweaks to support the other (Groupon-ish) half of Lashou:

• At least the web interface has absolutely nothing to do with GPS. You can check-in to anywhere sitting in your office. And those check-in all count.
• Each check-in grants 6 points. Check-in and leave a tip gives 8 points.
• Users who have bought stuff with this website’s Groupon Clone service have extra treat. Adjusted points granted = 6 + (6*0.3*how many times you bought stuff on Lashou). You bought three items there, your average check-in will be worth 6+(6*0.3*3)=11.4 points
• Active user who SPENT MORE MONEY on its Groupon aspects also has a 1% extra bonus to check-in points.
• Users who installed the client on iPhone, and bound the account to a Sina Weibo (the leading Twitter clone), and have over 1,000 followers on Weibo, also gets 1% bonus to check-in points.
• The website ranks users in accordance with check-in points every 24 hours (0:00 to 24:00). Top 3 point bandits get CNY 25 coupon at a rather popular hotpot franchise (呷卟呷卟, if you are interested). User points are cleared every midnight.
• Yes, there are also badges to unlock, you bet. It’s not clear how many badges are available and how exactly to unlock them yet.

Some interesting findings during the experiment:

• For the lack of GPS factor, you can check into wherever you like, or invent places out of thin air to check-in. I saw funny venue called “Abcd” with an address “asdf, Beijing”. And sure, there are duplicated venues.
• There doesn’t seem to be any check-in limit counter. You can check-in every single venue available everyday.
• The real-time check-in board pops up at least 1 new check-in message every 2 seconds. The board was still rolling rapidly after 3 hours into the observation.
• Threw a peek at leader scores during the process: top star had 974.9 points. Big white hot “WHUT?!”.  Dare you challenge this record on THE Foursquare, man?
• After one morning’s observation, there were at least 10 new users popped up in the check-in board.

Conclusion

Pro:

• One-two punch, nice. Rally Groupon-clone users into Foursquare-clone, and maybe vice a little versa.
• Great choice of client platform. iPhone is getting popular, and S60 is the emperor. Let’s forget WinMo (sort of minority), Android (absolutely minority), BlackBerry (you ever heard of this thingie, bro?).
• Solid stimulation. Hotpot coupon! Yay! And that’s from the service provider, it’s always available.
• Encourage cheating. Heats up user competition for the current stage. Users were dedicating a whole morning checking into hundreds of places.
• Chinese UI for everything. Of course.
• It’s getting media heat! Dubbed as “the Foursquare of China” and kind of regarded as the next golden boy.

Con:

• Encourage cheating. This is bound to be bad in the long run.
• Badges seem to be limited, and lack of interesting ones like “Jobs”. Actually, I failed to find a complete badge list anywhere. Not knowing what’s around the corner isn’t good.
• Limited phone support. In case, just in case, some day Android or WinPho7 devices gain popularity here…

That’s about the size of it. Good over bad, by quite far. I don’t think it’s time to worry about the genuine Foursquare though. Initiatives are lost, yes; the clone is doing good, yes; the war is far from over though. According to my previous timeline, they are still in phase 2. The first clone is only less than 2 months old, and it doesn’t seem to have gotten any venture capital. For quite some time Foursquare doesn’t have to worry about clone swarm. Given proper action and timing, everything could be changed.

But this Lashou should not be overlooked either. As previously mentioned, Chinese netizens are super faithful to the 1st thing they stick to. Like the Parking War and Friend for Sale game module on Facebook, they were cloned into Chinese websites, too. Unlike elsewhere, those two petty “games” went through “popular” stage into “frenzy” land. People were giving up sleep time trying to outdo their buddies over a virtual parking slot. This phenomenon (right after World of Warcraft) contributed to the “internet addiction” fuss haunting the whole society. That’s how far dedicated Chinese users can go. Things can be quite tricky if Lashou reaches that goal.

OK. So far, I’ve written a big chunk of subjective observation and assumption. Personally I’m rather interesting in what direction this not-really-competition would go. Lashou will be paid close attention. Interesting twists and turns will be covered.

Article by Kane Gao, Allegravita’s Head of Research