Looks like a battle royale for the Chinese social networks will soon come to head with QQ launching its own service:

QQ soft launches a new service called QQ Xiaoyou, which is a social networking service targeted at students in universities and high schools. Actually, Xiaoyou is the Chinese Pinyin for alumni. Currently, only invited QQ users are allowed to test the service.

Obviously QQ want to make Xiaoyou another China’s Facebook, it also has the similar UI as Facebook. However, The net culture of Facebook is quite different from that of QQ. In Facebook, people tend to use their real name in offline life, and bring their offline connection online, while in QQ, almost all users take online ID not real name, use avatar not their own photos, and make online friends. Now, QQ Xiaoyou requires its users to use their real name and real photo, and will verify it strictly. Now you need to let QQ Xiaoyou approve your information within three days.

I’d be interested in seeing how they would actually verify it so strictly–there’s no real way unless you’re meeting them in person or having them fill out a form that scares people into being real on it. Otherwise, I would not call anything else very strict.