If you’re looking to find friends, Zank might be able to help with that. The Chinese mobile startup app focuses on helping users find friends, dates, and fun nearby activities based on their location. Although nothing on the service’s site states it explicitly, its SEO and marketing images seem to imply the app is targeted at Chinese gays. It’s not the most unique concept in the world, but it’s quite well made, it’s the kind of app that can attract more than a few users anyway.
When I took Zank for a spin, the app hit all the right notes. Registration for the service was very friendly and remarkably quick. The app itself is clear and well-designed, so much so that even though it’s in Chinese, a non-Chinese speaker could probably figure out how to do almost everything the app lets you do (for example, adding an event, viewing someone else’s, liking an event, etc.). It even has a chat function so that you can talk to other people involved if you’re interested in an event. Honestly, aside from the fact that it isn’t a very original concept, I really having nothing bad to say about the app.
I’m not sure how many users the service has now, and have gotten in touch with the Zank team to see if they’ll tell me; I’ll update this post if I hear back. Based on my own experience, I’d say there have to be at least a few hundred users and probably more just in the Beijing area, and the service has more than 20,000 followers on Weibo. But other areas have far fewer; in Harbin, for example, there are currently only four events posted, and two of them are global events that appear for every city. It’s clear the team still has quite a bit of promotional work to do.
Update: This article was updated significantly to reflect the fact that the app seems to be being subtly marketed to gays, something we hadn’t noticed at first.
