I don’t have that much free time after work, and I rarely log in to the websites I used to visit. In the past two days, I saw a post on the A5 forum bbs.admin5.com saying that Xiaonei.com, no, it is now Renren.com, and many new applications and games have been developed, which are quite fun. I thought it was quite interesting, so I logged into the school network again. I hadn’t logged in for a long time, and my personal homepage was deserted.
Since the school network was changed to Renren, I basically stopped logging in. I logged back into Renren today and my popularity remains the same as before. At that time, when Renren changed its name, everyone was still speculating whether it would lose student users due to the name change. Now it seems that there is obviously no such problem. Although the students were a little uncomfortable with the name change at the time, they later discovered that Renren was only a formal name change and was not much different from the original one, so they continued to hang out on Renren. At present, the student group is still the mainstream of Renren, because students have more free time to share diaries, photos, and play games here.
When SNS websites became popular, they first retained users through games, such as stealing food, which almost everyone enjoyed. But after a while, the novelty wore off, no one was interested in the game, and the website traffic dropped. To retain users, SNS must always keep it fresh and make users willing to stay on the website.
Retain users and maintain traffic.
I haven’t logged into Renren for a long time. When I logged in again, I discovered many new changes. For example, the application has added many games, and these games have interactive functions. Different from the previous single form of self-entertainment, current application games add real-time interaction, such as the new "You draw and I guess" game, which is a multiplayer game. One person draws, several people guess, and you get extra points for guessing correctly. Users can communicate in real time in the game, and multiple people can play at the same time, which also increases the fun of the game. These new games have attracted many users to stop and play, with a considerable number of people online at the same time, and the website traffic continues to rise. After all, only by retaining users and maintaining traffic can the website continue to develop.
achieve profitability.
For every website to continue to develop, the problem of profitability is inevitable. How to make profits has become a pain in the SNS website industry. SNS has huge traffic, but its profits have never been directly proportional to the traffic. Now I log in to Renren again and see a lot of advertisements. Online games, underwear, postal services, and even pharmaceutical advertisements are all targeted at potential target groups. I don’t know how effective the advertising is, but the advertising fee should be quite high. After all, there is such a large amount of traffic. Of course, there are other product placement ads that also make the website very profitable. After Renren changed its name, users are no longer limited to students. Some people who have graduated and left school have not left this group. There is no obvious loss of website users, and website traffic is relatively guaranteed. When the website's profits are stable and the funds are abundant, it will naturally be able to develop more products. New products will keep users fresh and retain users. This is a virtuous cycle.
Traffic and profitability are two inevitable issues in website development. Generally speaking, the two are directly proportional. The greater the traffic, the greater the profit. Many personal websites bring popularity and increase traffic through daily promotion, so that the website will be profitable. If a website’s profit model is unclear, website development will naturally be difficult. It may be more difficult to operate a personal website because there is no financial and technical support, but the investment in a personal website is relatively small and returns may be realized in a shorter period of time. Only by retaining users can we maintain traffic and make the website profitable. Personal websites might as well try to learn from Renren's business model. (Text/Mengjiang)