It's touted as a virtual game where you 'check in' online to the location where you are in real life.
But Jiepang, seen by many as a mainland clone of Foursquare, is more than that, according to Vincent Chan, head of Jiepang Hong Kong. He says Jiepang has gone one up on its US counterpart by successfully positioning itself as a social networking tool and not just a game.
Both Jiepang and Foursquare are location-based services that use the built-in GPS of smartphones to track where a user is located. If you are in a bar in Central, you can open a location-based service application and 'check in' to that location. This information can be shared with friends on a range of social media networks, such as Facebook.
The application awards users with virtual badges and you can become mayor of a location if you are the most frequent visitor. You can even win real prizes, such as discounts at restaurants and shops.
The popularity of these location-based games has been exponential.
Foursquare, which was launched in March 2009 by two developers in New York, had about 500,000 users within the first few months. By last December, it boasted six million users and was available in several languages.
'We hope to see the same kind of explosion for Jiepang,' Chan said at a recent conference in Hong Kong. He said Jiepang, which launched on the mainland in May, has 400,000 users, with four million check-ins made in 2010. Forty per cent of Jiepang users were in Beijing, 36 per cent in Shanghai and 13 per cent in Guangzhou.