Xiaonei, a well-known Chinese social networking site modeled on Facebook changed its name to Renren on Tuesday in an effort to broaden its appeal beyond its current audience of mostly college students. Xiaonei means "on campus" while the new Renren means "everybody".

The name is designed to help the website be more inclusive, and reach out to all internet users, Chen Yizhou, CEO of Oak Pacific Interactive, which owns Xiaonei.com, said in a public letter to Xiaonei users.

The change is not a big deal, because the site just lets friends talk to each other, some users of Xiaonei.com said, observing that the commercialization was inevitable anyway.

Others worried that the network would expand to include many different types of people, and could lose its campus feel. Expanding Xiaonei.com outside of college campuses could lead to an uncomfortable mixing of people's work and social lives, they said.

Xiaonei.com, which has about 70 million registered users, was founded in December 2005. Its design and functions are very similar to that of Facebook, an even more popular American social networking site founded in 2004. Both websites were originally targeted at university students. In China, the Xiaonei.com network is often used as a way to make new friends and even meet potential boy or girlfriends.

Xiaonei used to require that students identify their faculty and dorm buildings, and appoints students at each university to serve as Xiaonei.com administrators. Those requirements have been mostly abandoned, however, and now a valid email address is sufficient to register.

After the website was bought by Oak Pacific Interactive in October of 2006, it quickly became more commercialized, opening registration to workers in well-known companies in November 2007. In July of that year, third-party organizations were allowed to develop applications for Xiaonei. Oak Pacific Interactive also owns several other well-known websites including mop.com, an interactive entertainment portal, donews.com, an IT community, and kaixin.com, which was sued earlier in June by kaixin001, the most famous social networking site among office workers in China, for alleged plagiarism.

Renren.com was originally owned by a Hong Kong-based online company until the company closed down in 2001. Chen Yizhou bought the domain name in 2005, and launched as a consumer information website there in 2006, but that venture failed in 2007, again leaving the website vacant until now.

(chinadaily.com.cn August 5, 2009)