Chinese social network Xiaonei.com was bought out by Oak Pacific in October 2006 and even raised $430 million in May 2008.  The name Xiaonei translated to “in campus” in the Chinese language.  Essentially this limits people to believe that the social network is only limited to college and university students in China.  The name Renren actually means “everyone” in Chinese.

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.

Xiaonei (校内网 literally “on-campus network”), the leading social networking site popular among college students in China, announces to rebrand to Renren (人人网  literally “everyone’s network”) on 4th August so as to target the mass market. Chen Yizhou, CEO of Xiaonei’s parent company Pacific Interactive (千橡互动集团), declares the reason and plan in a public PR letter to Xiaonei’s users.

Xiaonei was started in December 2005 by Tsinghua University graduates Wang Xing, Wang Huiwen, Lai Binqiang and Tang Yang. In October 2006, Xiaonei was acquired by Oak Pacific Interactive (千橡互动集团), a Chinese Internet consortium that created a similar college social network called 5Q. Qak Pacific Interactive bought the Renren.com domain in 2005.

In November 2007, Xiaonei broadened its target market to a wider user base via opening registration to high school students and white-collars. At present, 32,000 universities and colleges, 56,000 high schools and 85,000 companies in China and 1,500 universities in 29 other countries are available on Xiaonei’s confirmation system. Today, Xiaonei is recognized as “China’s largest online community website among universities” with more than 22 million active users and an estimated 40 million users who have registered their real names.

However, its rival Kaixin001 (开心网 literally “happy network”), a Chinese social networking site which launched in April 2008 for white-collar market, has been the fastest developed SNS in China. Compared with Xiaonei, Kaixin001 appeals to white-collar office workers with a simpler UI that is more intuitive to older audiences. This is a significant detail in China, where one in four college students does not own a computer and can only access Xiaonei by walking to an Internet Cafe and paying by the minute. White-collar office workers by comparison, spend an average of eight hours a day in front of the computer.