Why build Chinalyst ?

Chinalyst was built based on the basic need for a blogging community for the English China related blogging. Current projects in China lack in some respects and Chinalyst tries to extend their abilities to create a real community.

livinginchina.com

There were lots of different opinions about livinginchina.com but it seems that there was a good reason why livinginchina.com was closed down. Reasons were discussed widely on the China English blogosphere but it seems that all agree that the project turned into something too big (at some point called "Living on the Planet") that it became irrelevant ( summary1/summary2/example1/example2). We're just focusing on building a blogging-aggregator based community.

China Blog List

China Blog List has done a superb job of collecting all the China related English blogs into one place. Yet, the next step needs to be taken to allow the content of those blogs to be shared and discussed as a community. Chinalyst allows reading content from China blogs in anyway the reader likes (RSS based categories and dynamic search), referring to posts and allowing communal discussion.

Hao Hao Report

We absolutely adore HHR and think it's a wonderful project. Yet, all Digg/pligg based/cloned websites require that information be tagged, usually referring to one post or one news item and they usually aim to highlight items from all content available ton the web, not just blogs.

We want to make that process automatic, so that information from the blogs is provided all the time with the ability to respond to that information. We like the Digg concept, but we think that a communal aggregator gives a true value alternative solution for the China English blogging community. Using those two together sounds like a great combo.

Technorati with the China tag

there are differences between the platforms and therefore advantages and disadvantages to each platform, depending on the reading preferences.

In Technorati there's no real sense of community, every blog that writes about China gets tagged, even if the blog is totally unrelated and there's no room for discussion and rating. Technorati is just, well, massive.