According to Boyd and Ellison (2008), social network sites are “web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.”
There is a figure showing the timeline of launch dates of several major social networking sites in Boyd and Ellison’s research paper “Social Networking Sites: Deinition, History, and Scholarship” (2008). And they mentioned the relaunch of QQ—a Chinese instant messaging service in 2006.
Actually before QQ set up its SNS, there was another famous Chinese SNS launched in Dec.2005—Xiaonei. And now its name has been changed to Renren. At the beginning, Xiaonei set high school and college students as its target audience. It tried to provide a platform for students to keep in touch even after their graduation. At that time, users can only use their real personal profile and school email address to set up an account. I can still remember clearly that I set up my Xiaonei account in the summer of year 2006 after I graduated from high school. And I have kept this account for 5 years. I think maybe it tried to replicate Classmates.com.
However, with the launch and development of Facebook, Xiaonei started to change its style closer to Facebook. It extended the scope of its target audiences and opened to all of netizens. And in 2009, its name was changed to Renren. Now it is one of Chinese famous SNSs.
Resource:
Boyd, D., & Ellison, N. (2008). Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210-230.
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