Testren.com: How much do you know about ... ?

Now, avid and loyal readers, check this out -- shanghaiist.testren.com -- and see how much you know about us. (We will check your score!) We learned of this link through a friend's signature on MSN. She has her own test page for her friends, and after we did a little Google research, we found out there are 35,400 weblinks containing Testren.com. Testren.com (in Chinese) is a personal test website started about a year ago by a 28-year-old Shanghainese guy named Pu Bin. Basically it’s a website that allows registered users to have their very own personalized page, and design questions for people they want to test, such as friends, colleagues and relatives. The person who started the page can also view testees' scores online. Most users design personal questions such as my favourite cuisine, how many times have I changed my English name, etc.

Although Testren didn't launch with its current URL until January 9, 2006, the number of registered users is already more than 3 million and still growing. Among the users, there are about 1 million in Shanghai (these are just a rough statistics, as 60 percent of the traffic comes from Shanghai). In this news365.com.cn report (in Chinese), Pu Bin says he expects the website to enter the Alexa Top 500 list (the most popular sites in the world) in three months. He also plans to get more celebrities to build their own testing pages on Testren to attract more traffic. That strategy seems to have worked for blogs.

Other Shanghaiist contributors can email Zat Liu to help fill in more questions.