Renren, "The Facebook of China", looks for a comeback

Renren plays the nostalgia card with new mini program, but reaction has been lukewarm

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Renren, "The Facebook of China", looks for a comeback

Published: 6:30pm, 14 Aug 2018Updated: 8:36am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

China once had its own answer to Facebook.

Renren, founded in 2005, was one of the biggest social networks in the early years of the Chinese internet. Today, it’s mostly just a memory for the country’s netizens.

Similar to Facebook, Renren initially focused on students, encouraging them to create profiles using their real identities. The absence of the real Facebook in China helped Renren gather millions of young users who used the site daily to connect to their friends (or stalk their crushes).

In its heyday, Renren had more than 100 million users, and a higher valuation than the country’s then-biggest internet portals, including NetEase and Sina.

But its decline started shortly after a high-profile IPO in the US in 2011. While Facebook took off quickly outside of US college campuses, Renren failed to expand and adjust to China’s changing internet landscape. As Chinese web users migrated to mobile at an increasing speed, they flocked instead to smartphone platforms like Tencent’s WeChat, which launched in 2011.

Renren CEO Chen Yizhou at the New York Stock Exchange on May 4, 2011. (Picture: Reuters)

“We failed to stand up to the pressure from WeChat,” Renren's CEO Chen Yizhou said in a blog post this month. “The time spent [on Renren] by our college student users dropped after they graduated.”