游戏邦注：本文原作者是一科米（TechRice）博客撰稿人Kai Lukoff。

人人网（目前估值达40多亿美元）正为IPO作准备的消息已成为业界热议的话题，许多媒体甚至提前给人人网贴上了“中国的Facebook”的标签，但我认为事实并非如此。

1）Facebook是社交网络霸主，人人网与其存在差距。

Facebook is dominant,Renren is not

Facebook是一个跨年龄、地区和人种的社交网络之王，笔者所认识的美国人几乎都是Facebook的铁杆用户，而且我的父母使用Facebook也有好几年了。我89岁的德国祖母最近还让我帮她注册一个Facebook帐号，原因是她经常在新闻报道中听到Facebook这个名称。虽然Facebook也让用户产生了一些困扰（游戏邦注：例如，“我是否应该将老板添加到Facebook好友列表中？”或者“我和你妈妈成了Facebook好友”），但毋庸质疑的是，Facebook已然形成了一个强大的社交圈子。

但人人网在社交网络领域的影响力仍然有限，它只是这一领域众多竞争者中的一员。人人网现在仍难以彻底摆脱原来以学生群体为核心的用户定位，如果从“低端”的高中生或农村用户层面来看，它面临腾讯朋友、Qzon、51.com的挑战，如果从“高端”的白领阶层来看，我认为人人网虽然有可能因开心网的没落而获益，但真正能填补这一市场空缺的应该是新浪微博。

新浪微博对人人网构成的威胁，远甚于Twitter之于Facebook。我认为新浪微博而非人人网，才有可能成为连结中国的社交网络——正如Facebook将世界其他地区连为一体一样。

RedTech Advisers网站推出了一份很值得一读的“中国SNS发展概况”（The Rise and Stall of SNS in China）的PPT，该报告也显示人人网的相关数据并不乐观，“我们发现人人网的综合浏览量和用户浏览量比6个月下降了14%（而微博的相同数据在同一时期却增长了3倍）”。

Traffic Rank

2）人人网也并非“中国的Zynga”

社交游戏的爆炸式发展极大刺激了Facebook的收益增长，部分原因是社交游戏在Facebook的广告价格上升所致。人人网在游戏领域也很有优势，但这里指的并非社交游戏。人人开放平台上的第三方社交游戏和应用开发商在2010年总共仅创收350万美元。

我所认识的社交游戏开发商几乎都正涌向腾讯朋友和Qzone社交平台，有一名CEO甚至宣称他们的游戏在Qzone上一天的活跃用户就高达1000万。虽然开发商在腾讯朋友的收益分成比例偏低（一般仅能回收30%至48%收益），但如此庞大而充满诱惑的用户规模也足以使人人网丧失光芒。

实际上，人人网更像是一个为网页游戏、MMORPG游戏（中国互联网最强大的吸金工具）导入流量的门户网站，虽然这种运营模式利润也很丰厚（人人网是一个纵向发展的平台，并且自主开发了许多游戏），但它并不能打造一个发展速度堪比社交游戏的产业。

虽然我不会购买人人网股票，但仍然希望它可以摆脱瓶颈，并认为它的营收仍将持续增长，只是不能预测它的用户规模是否会有增无减。值得注意的是，虽然人人网对应去年的市销率为67倍，而高盛投资Facebook时的市销率仅为25倍，但人人网并非Facebook。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Why Renren is NOT “The Facebook of China”

Renren is preparing for an IPO today at a $4+ billion dollar valuation. We can also prepare for a billion articles selling Renren as “The Facebook of China.” Here’s why that’s NOT true.

1) Facebook is dominant, Renren is NOT

Facebook is stunningly dominant, a single network that spans demographics, generations, and geographies. Literally everyone I know in the US is on Facebook, most of them daily. Both my parents have been on Facebook for years. My 89-year old German grandmother recently asked me to help her set up an account, because she’d been hearing about Facebook so much in the news. That could lead to its own set of problems down the road (e.g, “Should I friend my boss?” or “I Facebooked your mom”), but for now Facebook is the social layer.

Renren is nowhere close. It’s one of many players in a crowded, competitive social landscape. It faces entrenched incumbents any which way it tries to move from its core student demographic. If “down” to high school students or rural users, it faces Pengyou, Qzone, and 51.com. If “up” to urban white-collars, I used to think Renren could feast on Kaixin001′s decline, but Sina Weibo has filled that void.

Sina Weibo is far greater threat to Renren than Twitter ever was to Facebook. It’s Sina Weibo, not Renren, that has a decent chance of uniting all of China behind one social network–like Facebook has achieved in much of the rest of the world.

RedTech Advisers has a must-read powerpoint on “The Rise and Stall of SNS in China” (embedded below), which also questions Renren’s sketchy numbers,  saying “we see Renren’s page views and user views down 14% from 6 months ago (compared to a 3x rise in microblogs).”

2) Renren is NOT “The Zynga of China”

The explosion of social games greatly accelerated Facebook’s revenue growth, in part by driving ad prices way up. Renren is strong in gaming, but not social gaming. Renren’s open platform for 3rd party social game and application developers generated a measly $3.5 million in revenue in 2010.

Social game developers I’ve spoken with are flocking to Tencent’s Pengyou and Qzone social networks. One CEO said his firm was hitting a monstrous 10m daily active users on Qzone. Those user numbers dwarf what Renren can offer and are thus worth it despite Tencent’s lower revenue share (~30% vs ~48% on Renren).

Instead, Renren acts like a portal, directing traffic to web games and MMORPGs (45% of Renren revenues), the traditional moneymakers on the Chinese internet. That’s profitable (especially because Renren is vertically integrated and produces many of the games itself), but it’s also an industry that does not have nearly the same growth trajectory as social games.

Given the ravenous appetite for Chinese tech stocks, I still expect Renren to jump out of the gate (the initial share price range was recently raised upon high investor interest), though I would not speculate myself. I think it’s a fine business whose revenues (especially group-buying) will certainly grow (Jeremy Goldkorn also highlights a number of Renren’s strengths in a TechCrunch article), but I’m not sold on the user growth.

Renren is asking for a 67x multiple of its 2010 sales. Goldman recently valued Facebook at 25x. Renren is NOT Facebook.（source:techrice）