I just tried out Zuosa today. In many ways, it is a Twitter clone. The idea, design and even the colours are much alike, but like any good clone, it has grown apart from the original in many ways. Here are some things that are different:
What’s Canada Doing?
A link on the right-side of the homepage leads to a page with Tweets Zuosas from other users in the same location. For most Chinese users, this will be a city, but it only goes down to the country level for foreign locations, which is fine for me because there wouldn’t be enough Zuosa users in Edmonton otherwise.
Suggested Hashtags
Above the entry, the box is suggested hashtags such as “Avatar” and “Train Tickets” which I assume are some of the most popular hashtags at the moment. Since Zuosa users are going to be new to micro-blogging and have not likely used Twitter, this is probably there to teach new users.
Add Photos, Videos, Mp3s, Etc.
Directly below the entry box is an area to add photos and documents as well as links, links to videos and links to mp3s. Nice in theory, but it failed when I tried to upload both a gif and a jpeg. The acceptance of links to mp3s is a nice touch. Mp3 search is one of the most often cited reasons that Baidu has been able to beat Google in China. Real-time sharing and search of mp3s via Zuosa seems like a great idea to me.
Pause and Play Buttons
While Twitter.com will give users a notice that there are new Tweets, Zuosa goes a step further by providing a “play” button. Press it and Zuosas are refreshed automatically every few seconds.
Active Users
One part I find pretty useless is the active users block. It seems to be showing users that have simply made the most posts in the last 24 hours encouraging some users to post mass quantities of absolute fluff.
External clients aside, I think Zuosa.com is more feature-rich and user-friendly than Twitter.com, especially for new users. Zuosa.com provides me with everything I need for now, so I don’t even need to download a client yet.
I look forward to playing with this further and plan to check out the other Chinese micro-blogs as well.
My Zuosa page
Click the image below to see a full screenshot of Zuosa with translation notes.
