If I ask who are the popular social networking sites in China? I think most of you will talk about Kaixin001.com, QQ, 51.com and Xiaonei.com. However, since yesterday, there is no Xiaonei.com anymore, Joe Chen, CEO of Oak Pacific changed its name from Xiaonei.com to RenRen.com.
But why changing the already well-known Xiaonei.com brand to Renren.com (brief history of Renren below)? Some people think it is because Xiaonei means “in campus” in Chinese, which limited its users bases on university and college users. By changing its name to Renren, which means “everyone” in Chinese, can help to promote to white collar users, this market is now dominated by Kaixin001.com.
That’s why there is also rumor that Joe Chen plans to merge all three SNS sites under Oak Pacific, i.e. Xiaonei, MOP and Kaixin.com, into Renren.com. But they denied the rumor. If so, they already have Kaixin.com which compete head-to-head with Kaixin001.com on white collar users, why bother to change the name of Xiaonei. After Xiaonei changed name and strategy, will there be another site who can dominate the university and college users SNS market? Will it be QQ Xiaoyou?
Renren.com actually is not a new site, which was founded in 1999 and was a quite high-profile website during the Internet Bubble, it went bankruptcy in 2001. Joe Chen bought Renren.com domain name in 2005. Joe Chen relaunched RenRen.com as an online classified site in 2006, but it was shut down again in 2007.
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