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Renren

Type	Public (NYSE: RENN)
Foundation date	December 2005 (2005-12)
Headquarters	Beijing, People's Republic of China
Area served	China
Founder(s)	Wang Xing, Wang Huiwen, Lai Binqiang
Industry	Social networking service
Website	http://renren.com/
Alexa rank	141 (February 2013[update])[1]
Advertising	Banner ads, referral marketing
Registration	Required
Available in	Chinese language
Current status	Active
Screenshot Screenshot as of May 2011

The Renren Network (Chinese: 人人网; pinyin: Rénrénwǎng; literally "Everyone's Website"), formerly known as Xiaonei Network (Chinese: 校内网; literally "on-campus network") is a Chinese social networking service that exists as the Chinese remake of Facebook.^[2] It has been called the Facebook of China, popular amongst college students.^[3] In February 2011, Renren made a pre-IPO announcement that it had 160 million registered users.^[4] Later, in April 2011, it had to update its statement accurately to "a total of 31 million active monthly users."^[5] Renren Inc. has its headquarters in Chaoyang District, Beijing. Renren also has offices in Shanghai and Guangzhou.

History [edit]

Xiaonei was founded by Joseph Chen in 2005. Chen, a graduate of the University of Delaware, Stanford Business School and MIT, remains the chairman and CEO.[6] In March 2008, Xiaonei launched its WAP version, which users can access through mobile phones.[7] 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.[8]

In August 2009, Xiaonei officially changed its name to Renren, as well as its domain to www.renren.com。And also, the logo has changed from the chinese word"xiaonei" to the chinese word"renren"(everybody,in chinese words, it is "people"and "people"),and two words are crossing each other, means this website was created to become a easier platform for people to communicate. 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.[9]

In April 2011, the company filed with the SEC to raise $584 million in a US IPO,[5] offering Renren stock on the New York Stock Exchange. The company reported 2010 revenue of $76 million USD.[10]

At the beginning of creating "renren.com", and users were only able to use specific IP address from specified colleges.This action was to encourage all the users to use their true names to post blogs and pictures.

Corporate affairs [edit]

Renren Inc. has its headquarters on the 23rd floor of the Jing An Center (S: 静安中心, T: 靜安中心, P: Jìng'ān Zhōngxīn) in Chaoyang District, Beijing. Renren has its Shanghai office in the SOHO Zhong Shan Square (S: SOHO中山广场, T: SOHO中山廣場, P: SOHO Zhōngshān Guǎngchǎng) in Changning District, Shanghai. Renren has its Guangzhou office in the China Shine Plaza (S: 耀中广场, T: 耀中廣場, P: Yàozhōng Guǎngchǎng) in Tianhe District, Guangzhou.^[6]

Open Platform [edit]

In July 2007, Xiaonei officially facilitated its Open Platform, allowing third parties to integrate with platform by rendering modifications and adding functionalities. The APIs Xiaonei listed are quite similar with those Facebook provided, and some of Xiaonei's developers are developing based on the SDK of Facebook.^[7][8][9]

Privacy Policy [edit]

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, becoming 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.^[10]

Privacy Leakage April 2011 [edit]

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,^[11][12] a short statement^[13] and a piece of attacking code^[14] 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.

Functions [edit]

Renren is a typical SNS with a variety of functions with its own characteristics. Most functions are just the same as those in Facebook, so Renren is also called "Chinese Facebook". In general, it is updated once or twice a year when the system's functions require rectification and further development. In addition, it changes the web page's design on special days, like Spring Festival or National Day.

Profile [edit]

As Renren 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 Renren’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, Renren has also developed functions to edit profile music and background.

Friends [edit]

Registered users can add friends to the friend list. By specifying educational information in the profile, a user can easily find other users. Users can be also affiliated with groups (usually an existing class, school or organization).

Applications and censorship [edit]

There are some common kinds of expressions on Renren, such as renewing the mood (lit. updating personal state), blogging, voting and sharing others’ blogs. In addition, users upload photos and share photos, articles and external links (usually videos). Leaving a message or commenting on photos, blogs, status, etc. is quite commonly seen; the interacting users leaving and replying to messages is considered a prominent instance of basic communication on Renren. 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, and selling and buying of friends.

However, Renren’s censorship is fairly strict, especially to sensitive keywords in the blogs, compared with other SNS websites in China. Blog entries containing keywords like Tiananmen Square massacre, Falun Gong and Zhao Ziyang cannot be released. Others that are suspected to be related to political topics, obscenity or thrillers are manually censored by administrators, delaying or blocking their release.

Academic Studies [edit]

Unlike many other social networks, Renren has collaborated with academic researchers to understand the growth and structure of its user community. The results have produced several academic publications. One of the first studies ^[15] studied the Renren social graph structure and found it similar to prior studies of Facebook's social graph. The study also used Renren's unique feature, a per-user "recent visitors" log, to create an anonymous history of users and how they browse each other's profiles, which was the first of its kind. A second study ^[16] detailed the process of analyzing and improving detection of fake users (also called Sybil accounts) on Renren.

Points and levels [edit]

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 users' profiles without their knowledge.^[17] Alternatively, users can gain access to all privileges by paying a monthly fee to become a VIP user.

Xiaoneidou [edit]

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.

Kaixin [edit]

Renren's parent company, Oak Pacific Interactive, launched a Chinese copy of Kaixin001 called Kaixin. On September 29, 2010, Oak Pacific announced it would integrate Renren with Kaixin.^[18] Users can use the same username to log into Renren and Kaixin. Kaixin used the same layout as Kaixin001.

On April 11, 2011, Renren was found guilty of infringing on Kaixin001's rights and ordered to pay 400,000 yuan to its rival. Kaixin001.com announced on April 26, 2011 that it had appealed the April 11 ruling as it was unsatisfied with the amount of compensation as well as the lack of change regarding Renren's usage of Kaixin.com. It also demanded an official apology.^[19]

See also [edit]

	Beijing portal
	Companies portal
	Internet portal

• FaceKoo
• List of social networking websites
• Internet in China
• Vkontakte

References [edit]

• Xiaonei: Just Another Networking Brigade, University of Southern California US-China Institute, 2007-07-10.
• University-Born Online Communities Enter New Battlefield, BeijingReview.com, 2007-11-27.

Footnotes [edit]

External links [edit]

• Official website (Mobile)
  • formerly Xiaonei
• Renren Inc.
• Renren Inc. (Chinese (PRC))
• Xiaonei Club