Going International

                             

I am very unfamiliar with a lot of social media sites in America, and even more so with social media sites popular in other countries. I chose to learn more about renren.com since it is a primary social networking site used in China. Renren was originally launched in 2005 by college students. Overall, the site looked very similar to Facebook in terms of color scheme, layout and purpose.

                                           

Unfortunately, this post will lack experience with the social media site because when I accessed renren.com, everything was in Chinese and I was unable to find an English button to translate. The majority of this post will unfortunately come from research regarding the social media site.

Apparently Renren is beginning to decline in popularity in China when it was once the most popular social networking site that there was in the country. Facebook was once banned in the country, however, Renren was unable to dominate in the absence of the world’s largest and most dominating social networking site. Renren blames the fierce competition for the lack of performance in climbing the ladder in the social media world back to the top. 

A major issue that Renren has which is a major contributor to its demise as the most powerful social media site in China is due to the lack of ability to capture the mobile audience. Being able to connect with your audience and keep up with the trends of people and the social networking world is crucial to success as a social networking site as a whole. I found an interesting article highlighting why Renren may not be as effective for businesses to use, and also addressing the lack of connection with mobile users at: http://sampi.co/is-chinas-renren-still-relevant-for-marketing/.

Today, businesses that have previously used Renren are still on the social networking site and still advertising. However, very rarely does the site get new businesses coming in to advertise. While opportunities may be slim for businesses on Renren, the site still has 200 million users, but is continuously becoming less popular.