On August 4, 2009, Xiaonei was renamed "Renren".

According to our news, recently posts appeared on all major forums saying that Beijing QianXiang Interactive Group will close Xiaonei.com within a week. Yesterday, Chairman of QianXiang Interactie Group, Chen Yizhou made comments on this issue: QianXiang has already started its new strategy and officially renamed Xiaonei as Renren yesterday. This means the largest alumni website in China will no longer exist, and instead it will become a platform for all Internet users. According to what I learned from Internet insiders, this change will not affect user logins. All user information will be seamlessly transferred. It's just a domain name change. The original Xiaonei URL will still be used but will become a jump URL.

Regarding this change, Internet experts are all baffled. Some told reporters that Xiaonei's main feature is an alumni circle social website. If it becomes an open platform, then there will be no competitive differentiation with QianXiang's Kaixin (www.kaixin.com) or even the official Kaixin (www.kaixin001) which currently has 40 million users. The expert said the reason for Xiaonei becoming an open platform might be to attract high-end advertisements and prepare for revenue generation.