Renren struggles to arrest its decline

When Renren went public in May 2011, Gaskins was one of those who had high expectations for the stock. At $14 a share, Renren was valued at 72 times annual sales, more than twice the multiple on Facebook at the time of its 2012 IPO.

Renren's market capitalization has dropped by about $5.7 billion since then as the stock lost 76 percent.

Renren's shares gained 0.3 percent to $3.36 on Tuesday while the Bloomberg-China Equity Index of the most-traded Chinese companies in New York rose 3.1 percent.

Amanda Dingyuan Hou, a Chinese freelance video producer in New York who switched from Myspace to Facebook and from Renren to Tencent's WeChat, thinks the change in social media preferences has been about more useful services and more relevant content.

"When Renren appeared, students like me added as many friends as possible, but you get tired scrolling through horoscopes and advertisements searching for original content, because WeChat looked like a more enticing platform for posting news and reading comments," Hou said.

"It was the same with Myspace: You log in, you scroll through your newsfeed, only to find out that all the interesting conversations are happening on Facebook."

Three years after its IPO, Renren's valuation has fallen to less than eight times sales.

The 24-year-old Hou still checks her Renren account about three times a week, though for WeChat "it's every hour".

Monthly unique users decreased to about 44 million as of June, Renren said in a statement in August. That compares with more than 438 million monthly active users for WeChat.

"Renren could try to turn around, but for that you would need strong management, a precise plan and financial resources," said Henry Guo, a San Francisco-based analyst at JG Capital.

"I don't know where it can get the money, and there are no strong management decisions in sight."