Renren is a typical SNS with a variety of functions with its own characteristics. In general, it is updated once or twice a year when the system's functions require rectification and further development. In addition, it changes the web page's design on special days, like Spring Festival or National Day.
Profile
As Renren mainly caters to college students, the key information to make one's identity effective is college, high school, middle school and hometown. 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 Renren's confirmation system. The social networks for each of these specified colleges, schools and companies have been established. In the additional section of personal profiles, users can also put on information about their contact information, hobbies, favorite music, movies, the clubs they joined, etc. To personalize the profile, Renren has also developed functions to edit profile music and background.
Friends
Registered users can add friends to the friend list. By specifying educational information in the profile, a user can easily find other users. Users can be also affiliated with groups (usually an existing class, school or organization).
Applications and censorship
There are some common kinds of expressions on Renren, such as renewing the mood (lit. updating personal state), blogging, voting and sharing others' blogs. In addition, users upload photos and share photos, articles and external links (usually videos). Leaving a message or commenting on photos, blogs, status, etc. is quite commonly seen; the interacting users leaving and replying to messages is considered a prominent instance of basic communication on Renren. Activities can be held online by calling on friends to participate. There are also several peripheral applications, such as online mini games, regular games, doggies, testing, parking lot, and selling and buying of friends.
However, Renren's censorship is fairly strict, especially to sensitive keywords in the blogs, compared with other SNS websites in China. Blog entries containing keywords like Tiananmen Square Massacre, Falun Gong and Zhao Ziyang cannot be released. Others that are suspected to be related to political topics, obscenity or thrillers are manually censored by administrators, delaying or blocking their release.
Renrenzhuomian is a kind of instant message service provided to renren.net users and it is established in 2009. It allows users viewing news and messages online, generating new short blogs, replying to others, and forwarding news by simply opening this software and logging into the account.
Nowadays, people show more preference to install this simple and smart program to log into Renren, browsing and sharing news with others, rather than login to the original webpage on browsers. This is mainly because the establishment of Renrenzhuomian mobile app (for both iOS and Android). People can log into their Renren accounts anywhere and this is much more convenient.
Additional functions include:[18] One can click to choose their online status and if they choose the "invisible status", others cannot see. This function is useful when someone wants to peek at some news but wants to remain anonymous. Multi-users chatting is available in Renrenzhuomian. One can talk to several people at the same time and all people will be added to a chatting group automatically. GIF emoticon is available in Renrenzhuomian, which is not supported technically on the websites. GIF emoticon can present more vivid expression and young users like this function. Renrenzhuomian enables users to download all the pictures in an album in a single click. Batch downloading function is not available on renren websites however it is available on mobile apps and it quite effective when you need it. User gets notification when someone replies or when fresh news is posted by friends. Renrenzhuomian provides faster and more effective notification.
- Log in with an invisible status
- Batch picture downloading
Academic studies
Unlike many other social networks, Renren has collaborated with academic researchers to understand the growth and structure of its user community. The results have produced several academic publications. One of the first studies [19] studied the Renren social graph structure and found it similar to prior studies of Facebook's social graph. The study also used Renren's unique feature, a per-user "recent visitors" log, to create an anonymous history of users and how they browse each other's profiles, which was the first of its kind. A second study [20] detailed the process of analyzing and improving detection of fake users (also called Sybil accounts) on Renren.
Points and levels
Renren users earn "points" for various activities, such as logging in regularly, posting updates, and receiving comments and replies from contacts. As users earn points, their "level" on the website increases, and at certain levels users gain extra privileges such as access to additional emoticons, skins for their profile, and the ability to view other users' profiles without their knowledge.[21] Alternatively, users can gain access to all privileges by paying a monthly fee to become a VIP user.
Renrendou
The Renrendou, or Renren beans (人人豆), is the virtual currency on Renren. Due to some functions charging users fees, Renrendou can be used to purchase gifts, commence the Purple Bean service (紫豆服务), exchange for game coins and advertise. 1 RMB is equivalent to 1 Renrendou.
