Can Renren, ‘China’s Facebook’ from the dotcom era, win back its millennial audience with nostalgia?
- Once widely used by students, Renren fell out of favour in the smartphone era as mobile-focused apps such as WeChat and Weibo became more popular
- It has launched its first mobile social networking app, hoping to win this demographic back
Guangxi resident Zeng Mou first got his Renren account in 2006. The Chinese social networking site was part of daily life for the college student, who would regularly post photos and engage with his friends on the platform.
Fourteen years down the road, the now 33-year-old civil servant still logs on daily “just out of habit”, but there is hardly anyone to engage with; “nobody uses it,” he said of the once-popular platform that was known as “China’s Facebook”.
Old-timers such as Zeng, who have been hoping for the revival of the platform, have some reason to cheer now though – Renren launched its first social networking mobile app last Monday in a bid to attract new users after years of losing ground to more mobile-focused social platforms such as WeChat and Weibo. The home-grown platform’s attempt to make a comeback in China’s social space comes amid fiercer competition for young audiences from Chinese internet giants such as Tencent, Baidu and the Post’s parent company, Alibaba.
The beta version of the app, available on both Apple and Android phones in China since last Monday, harks back to its original design before multiple unsuccessful attempts by the platform to reinvent itself – including becoming primarily a live streaming site and sidelining its social networking functions in recent years. Like Facebook, which it is often compared to, Renren’s classic design features blue and white as its signature colours and has similar timeline, photo and post functions.
On its launch Renren’s new app quickly gained traction, climbing 138 notches within a day to become the eighth-most downloaded iOS app in China, although it fell to 13th place a day later, according to App Annie.
Unveiled in 2005, a year after Facebook, Renren’s original name was Xiaonei, meaning “on campus” in Chinese. As its name suggested, Xiaonei was mainly known for connecting schoolmates and alumni just like Facebook was in its early years.