| Type | Public (NYSE: RENN) | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Founded | December 2005 | ||
| Founder(s) | Wang Xing, Wang Huiwen, Lai Binqiang | ||
| Headquarters | Beijing, People's Republic of China | ||
| Area served | China | ||
| Industry | Social network service | ||
| Website | http://renren.com/ | ||
| Alexa rank | 97 (January 2012[update])[1] | ||
| Advertising | Banner ads, referral marketing | ||
| Registration | Required | ||
| Available in | Chinese language | ||
| Current status | Active | ||
|
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The Renren Network (Chinese: 人人网; literally "Everyone's Website"), formerly known as Xiaonei Network (Chinese: 校内网; literally "on-campus network") is a Chinese social networking site that is similar to Facebook.[2] It has been called the Facebook of China.[3] It is popular among college students in China. In February 2011, Renren made a pre-IPO announcement that it had 160 million registered users.[4] Then in April 2011, it had to modify that statement to "a total of 31 million active monthly users."[5] The site has had to comply with prohibitions on content enforced by the Chinese Government.[6]
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Xiaonei was started in December 2005 by University of Delaware graduates Wang Xing, Tsinghua University graduates Wang Huiwen, Lai Binqiang and Tang Yang.[7] In October 2006, Xiaonei.com was acquired by Oak Pacific Interactive (OPI), a Chinese Internet consortium that created a similar college social network called 5Q. Wang left Xiaonei in July 2007.
In March 2008, Xiaonei launched its WAP version, which users can access through mobile phones.[8] Xiaonei features an instant messaging service (Rénrénzhuōmiàn, Chinese: 人人桌面) designed typically for its users using XMPP, which is more popular than Facebook chat.[9]
In August 2009, Xiaonei officially changed its name to Renren, as well as its domain to www.renren.com. This name change from 'inside the school' (Xiaonei 校内) to 'everybody' (renren 人人) reflected the expansion aspirations held by Oak Pacific - No more a network dedicated to students but the biggest Chinese social network website, which spreads throughout the society.[10]
In April 2011, the company filed with the SEC to raise $584 million in a US IPO,[11] offering Renren stocks in the New York Stock Exchange. The company reported 2010 revenue of $76 million USD.[12]
May 4, 2011 Renren prices IPO at $14, high end of revised range.[13]
In July 2007, Xiaonei officially facilitated its Open Platform, allowing the 3rd party to integrate with platform by rendering modifications and adding functionalities. The APIs Xiaonei listed are quite similar with those Facebook provided, and some of the developers of Xiaonei are developing based on the SDK of Facebook.[14][15][16]
Renren has a privacy policy to preserve personal information. Different privacy levels for profile, contact info and blogs can be modified in the privacy settings, thus others that fail to match the privacy requirements cannot browse the specific information or contents of a given user.
In April 2008, SoftBank bought a 14% share of Xiaonei, making its largest shareholder. As a result, a rumor came out that “the personal data of millions of Chinese college students on Xiaonei will be exposed to the Japanese since the Japanese company became the boss of Xiaonei". Soon, such claim was spread all over various popular forums, QQ groups, and social networking sites like Xiaonei. Later, Xiaonei declared the denouncement towards its rivals for slander and denied what had been described in the rumor.[17]
On April 29, 2011 a number of Renren users received a personal message saying that there's someone loving you, along with a piece of malicious code, providing the user's ID, name, school, birth date, cell-phone number, MSN, etc. to a third-party website. Such personal message exploited a bug of Renren and a built-in automatic-forwarding feature. So a great number of users were affected. On the next day, such news was reported by major IT news websites in China but those articles were removed. Only a series of screenshots,[18][19] a short statement[20] and a piece of attacking code[21] survived. The community has criticized Renren's reaction towards this event. They did not clarify what happened to its users or to the media, but tried to delete the data and also made use of its public relationship team to delete the posts on every IT news websites. This is probably related to its recent IPO filing.
Xiaonei is a typical SNS with a variety of functions with its own characteristics. It can be witnessed frequently updated, when the system’s functionalities requires rectification and further development, causing some of its functions blocked or partially limited.
As Xiaonei mainly caters for college students, the key information to make one’s identity effective is college, high school, middle school and hometown. At present, 32,000 universities and colleges, 56,000 high schools and 85,000 companies in China and 1,500 universities in 29 other countries are available on Xiaonei’s confirmation system. The social networks for each of these specified colleges, schools and companies have been established. In the additional section of personal profiles, users can also put on information about their contact information, hobbies, favorite music, movies, the clubs they joined, etc. To personalize the profile, xiaonei has also developed functions to edit profile music and background.
A registered user can constantly add old or newly-acquainted friends to the friend list. By specifying the educational information in the profile, a user may easily find other users that tally with his/her intention; correspondingly, the user may be searched by others with the similar intention. High school or college students are prone to find this advantageous when searching friends. Users can be also affiliated with groups of established titles (usually an existent class, school or organization).
There are some common kinds of expressions on Xiaonei, such as renewing the mood (lit. updating personal state), blogging, voting and sharing others’ blogs. Besides, users upload photos, share photos and external links (usually videos). Leaving a message or commenting any of a photo, blog, state, etc. is quite commonly seen; the interacting users leaving and replying the messages is considered a prominent instance of basic communication on Xiaonei. Activities can be held online by calling on friends to participate. There are also several peripheral applications, such as online mini games, regular games, doggies, testing, parking lot, selling and buying of friends.
However, Xiaonei’s censorship is fairly strict, especially to sensitive keywords in the blogs, compared with other SNS websites in China. Blogs containing keywords like Tiananmen Square massacre, Falun Gong and Zhao Ziyang cannot be released. Others that are suspicious or in possible relation to political topics, obscenity and thrillers, have to be manually censored by the administrators before they are released; this may postpone the blog to be exposed to online friends, and sometimes the blog may be blocked.
Renren users earn "points" for various activities, such as logging in regularly, posting updates, and receiving comments and replies from contacts. As users earn points, their "level" on the website increases, and at certain levels users gain extra privileges such as access to additional emoticons, skins for their profile, and the ability to view other user's profiles without others' knowledge.[22] Alternatively, users can gain access to all privileges by paying a monthly fee to become a VIP user.
The Xiaoneidou, or Xiaonei beans (校内豆), is the virtual currency on Xiaonei. Due to some functions charging users fees, Xiaoneidou can be used to purchase gifts, commence the Purple Bean service (紫豆服务), exchange for game coins and advertise. 1 RMB is equivalent to 1 Xiaoneidou.
Renren's parent company Oak Pacific Interactive launched a Kaixin001 Chinese copy called Kaixin. On September 29, 2010 Oak Pacific announced that it would integrate Renren with Kaixin.[23] Users can use the same username to log in both Renren and Kaixin. Kaixin used the same layout as Renren's competitor Kaixin001.
In April 11, 2011 Renren was judged guilty of infringement of Kaixin001's rights and ordered to pay 400,000 yuan to its rival. Kaixin001.com announced on April 26, 2011 that it has appealed appeal the April 11 ruling as it is unsatisfied with the amount of compensation as well as with the lack of change regarding Renren's usage of Kaixin.com. It also demands an official apology.[24]
Despite the fact that Renren has targeted Chinese college students, while Kaixin001 has appealed more to Chinese white-collar workers,[25] Industry experts say that their business models and target demographic are almost the same.[26]
