Recently, Chen Yizhou clearly stated that he would not sell Renren.com. Chen Yizhou said: "I can develop it into the largest SNS site among Chinese people, so why should I sell it?"
It is understood that Renren.com has already achieved profitability through brand advertising, paid applications, cross-site cooperation, and other methods. According to Yahoo's statistics, by 2015, the revenue of Facebook, a similar type of SNS site in the United States, is expected to reach $1.86 billion. As China's largest SNS site, Renren.com has enormous market potential in China.
In order to expand Renren.com's advantages, Chen Yizhou successively held roadshow speeches at prestigious universities such as Peking University. Moreover, Renren.com entered the white-collar and high school markets at the end of last year. Currently, it has opened accounts for 1,000 overseas universities, 3,000 domestic universities, 8,000 high schools, and 85,000 companies, with over 20 million real users and more than 9 million active users per day, basically monopolizing the college market. The newly opened white-collar market is 4-5 times larger than the college student market. Faced with such rapidly developing Renren.com, how could Chen Yizhou bear to "hand it over" to others?
Chen Yizhou, who has a special affection for university campuses, once sold ChinaRen for $33 million to Sohu. Later, in 2006, he acquired "Renren.com," which was then the largest SNS site in the country. In April this year, the new version of Renren.com's alumni directory is about to go online. In the SNS field, Chen Yizhou does not want to leave any opportunity for his competitors. Chen Yizhou said, "Renren.com started the earliest, and many people have established countless connections here. These connections are not something others can simply take away."