It has been a difficult few years for Renren. The Chinese social networking company often compared to Facebook once dominated China’s social media landscape, but over the past few years newer and hipper social products like Weibo and then WeChat have been eroding its user base. The company has attempted to make inroads in other industries including daily deals and mobile gaming, but it hasn’t found the kind of success it once enjoyed in social networking.
The company’s latest financial results don’t look pretty either. Net revenues are down nearly 50 percent compared to Q3 last year, operating loss has nearly quadrupled – these are not the figures of a healthy company. “The company is undergoing a challenging transition,” CEO Joseph Chen is quoted as saying in the company’s Q3 release. “But we remain committed to building the long term value for our shareholders through continuous transformation.”
There is one potential bright spot though: Renren’s monthly active user count seems to have bottomed out at about 44 million monthly active users. That may not sound like a good thing, but the company’s active users saw a big drop between Q1 and Q2 of this year, and there were fears that the drop would continue, and perhaps even accelerate. Instead, the Q3 numbers remained steady. Renren, it seems, may have stopped the bleeding when it comes to its regular user base.
Of course, that’s a far cry from the company having actually resolved its troubles, though. While its user numbers aren’t shrinking significantly, they also aren’t growing, and with revenues still dropping like a stone, Renren certainly isn’t out of the woods.
See: Hong Kong’s Gogovan grabs $10M investment from Renren for China expansion
(Source: Renren IR)
Photo by Eleni Preza
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