Renren.com, often dubbed China’s Facebook, is re-branding itself as a social-networking site for everyone, not just Chinese college students.
Like Facebook, the site started in college dorms, but under the name Xiaonei.com, Mandarin for “on campus.” The site’s owner, Beijing-based Oak Pacific Interactive Group, changed the name in August to Renren, which means “everyone.”
Unlike Facebook, which opened up its site beyond the educational community but achieved exponential growth without actively marketing it, Oak Pacific hired Saatchi & Saatchi to re-position Renren.com in a campaign that broke this month targeting white-collar workers up to age 35 who surf the web at work but haven’t yet joined the social-networking wave that has already swept through Chinese schools.
“We had to go after this demographic, [people] who aren’t on social networks in China as much,” said Dean Sciole, executive creative director of Saatchi & Saatchi, Beijing.
Renren.com topped 100 million registered users at the end of October, out of China’s total internet population of 360 million. Facebook has over 300 million registered users worldwide, but in China it has had to cede to local online entrepreneurs. Foreign sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr are generally blocked in the mainland by China’s so-called Great Firewall.
via Chinese Social Network Renren Expands Beyond Students – Global News – Advertising Age.
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