The New “Renren 6.0″ User Interface Places the Focus Back on Product

Last night I was tipped off by a follow Sunny from the Chinese tech blog Tech2IPO on Renren’s forthcoming new interface, “Renren 6.0″. If you have been following my posts, you would realize by now I don’t have place much stock in Renren’s user experience, the result of its current user interface. But after this recommendation from a friend, I checked out the new version. My first reaction is that this is what they should have done years ago.

Renren (NYSE: $RENN) is the first and most complete Facebook clone in China. Formerly known as Xiaonei, the site was originally a campus-based SNS like Facebook, but unlike Facebook it has failed to expand much beyond campuses.

Renren 6.0

Renren 6.0 is still in beta, but if you have a Renren account you can experience the homepage by clicking on this link.

Visually it is now much closer to Facebook, though I’m seeing pieces of Google’s minimalist Google Plus, notably for the icons under status update.

UGC counts provides a clear idea of how much a user is investing into the platform and also easy access to friend’s personal contents.

Also new under status updates is voice input, users can now record updates for their friends. It’s currently all the rage for mobile messaging products to support such Talkbox-style chatting.

From Media to Product

My lack of faith in Renren’s social product stems from their interface design and agressive advertising. But I recently had a long chat with a friend at Renren, and was told the firm is making the following changes:

• Tech-orientated – while most of the internet companies with influential SNS products are still heavily media and sales-oriented (e.g., Sina), Renren aims to poach top talent from companies like Google, so the company is fundamentally shifting more to the product side rather than its former media-centric style.
• User focused – with the purchase of 56.com, a lower-tier video site in China, Renren is on a campaign to elevate the volume and quality of user-generated contents that includes Likes, sharing of both photos and videos, in fact their HTC custom built Android-phone has an instant video upload feature, but with a RMB 3888 price tag, it’s also the most expensive SNS phone in China.
• SOLOMO is still key – a major portion of Renren’s current traffic volume is from mobile apps–CEO Joseph Chen recently said 35% of users log-in via mobile. With Nuomi and their LBS check-in service, Renren is hoping to provide personal on-the-go E-commerce experience to it’s users, which is also a main revenue source for the company.
• Stable growth – unlike some of its competitors who are experiencing explosive growth, Renren is growing slowly, focusing on freshman in college. In 2011, this group was about 6 million (over 9 million enrolled for the Gaokao college entrance exams, and 3 million failed).