Just a few days ago, AVOS (YouTube founders’ company) released a teaser of a mysterious social magazine sharing project called Zeen and now another not less interesting service has been revealed- A Chinese version of Delicious called Mei.fm.
From first look, it appeared to be basically like the Chinese edition of the new Delicious, only with a big rotating photo gallery on the top of the page and an activity ticker next to it. All other features seems to be exactly similar to the English Delicious features.
Interestingly enough, AVOS have launched this site under everyone’s radar. I only noticed it in the last couple of days when I was looking for more information about Zeen and discovered that AVOS has a third product under their About section over their company’s website.
But in the last few hours (on April 10th), it’s been (sort of) officially announced on ChinaTechNews that Mei.fm has entered China as localized version of Delicious. Although it just been announced, the site appears to be live for at least couple of weeks.
According to Alexa, it seems that the site was launched at some date in late March (this was the first time it has been crawled) and it even gained some impressive popularity in the short period of time it’s been live, naturally mostly in China.
On the site’s about page, Mei.fm is referred to as “Delicious Bookmarks” and it is also essentially described as Delicious as well. Here’s the translation of the first paragraph on the page, elaborating what exactly is the service:
What is Delicious Bookmarks
Delicious Bookmarks is a personalization and a social tool to help users to find and to share internet information collections consistent with the same interest. AVOS launched it for users in China, as a sister product for the sharing site Delicious.
Apparently, there are already 14 people working at Mei.fm at the moment but they are looking to expand furthermore. On the site’s career page it says that the company is currently looking to hire for the following positions: Product manager, community relations manager, UI designer, software engineers, system engineer and an editor.
Additionally on that page, the site’s values are also being described (translated version):
Small but excellent team of friendly colleagues.
Minimal management- We believe that the members can manage themselves.
Equal working environment, a high degree of autonomy.
Use your favorite tools and techniques for your work.
Dare to use new technologies in our products.
Focus on career development opportunities for the team members.
Attractive payments.
Although I’m impressed from the huge potential Mei.fm has in China (as evidence, its rising popularity in just couple of weeks), the big question is whether if the Chinese government will let it operate or it will block it just as it has blocked other social networking sites in the past.