No wonder China appears to be undergoing so many changes all at once. Technology ventures of all sorts are bursting out everywhere. Consider entrepreneur Joseph Chen, who would very much like to come China’s version of Mark Zuckerberg: He is is the founder of Renren.com, a social networking site that was formally known as Xiaonei.com (translated in English to “on campus”).
Renren shares Facebook’s blue-and-white trademark colors and was originally targeted toward university students. Renren Inc. is currently a leading social networking site in China, and is working towards the mobile Internet sector as more and more users are moving from computers to mobile devices. According to the China Internet Network Information Center, there were 513 million Internet users last year in China.
Among these, 73.4 percent were accessing the Internet through personal computers and 69.3 percent through mobile phones. Renren recently launched apps for all mobile platforms, including iOS and Android systems, and Renren HD has become the first social networking app in the Windows store for Microsoft devices.
When asked about the company’s loss of $20 million to $30 million in its mobile business, Chen replied that the reason for these losses is the fact that mobile advertising is less mature and isn’t as profitable as online advertising. “Every Internet company is like a country at war,” says Chen. “We all try to expand our territory and look for better weapons to beat each other.” The internet is indeed the world’s most powerful weapon.