Renren Launches a Social Travel Platform and App, Wants to Take a Trip
China’s biggest Facebook-like social network, Renren (NYSE:RENN), has launched a good-looking social travel app and site for its users. Called Fengche – meaning ‘windmill’ – it allows users to make a sort of photographic diary of their travels, which friends can then check out and comment upon.
Fengche comes with apps for Android and iPhone, where you can create your travel journal whilst still on the move – as indicated by the prominence of the central, green ‘camera’ button (pictured below). A look at the Fengche.com website reveals that individual trips created by users are then presented as sets – appearing like a cross between Flickr and Pinterest – and that its main purpose is for browsing. It seems that most of the creation happens in the apps.
Renren’s COO, Liu Jian, told Chinese media that Fengche was a natural expansion of its social media ecosystem, and that the content created by its users would have a far-reaching influence in the travel and tourism market.
RenrenのCOO 劉健(Liu Jian)氏は中国メディアに対し、Fengcheを導入したのはソーシャルメディア生態系を拡大する自然な成行きで、ユーザーが作るコンテンツは旅行、観光業界に多大な影響を及ぼすだろうと述べた。
RenrenのCOOであるLiu Jian氏が中国メディアに、Fengcheはソーシャルメディア・エコシステムが自然に発展したもので、ユーザーが掲載したコンテンツは旅行とその業界に大きな影響を及ぼすだろうと言っている。
The new social travel platform resembles the travel diary app AoYouJi which launched only very recently, after we previewed it at the end of last year – though AoYouJi focuses more on geo-tagging. Nonetheless, this might be bad news for the startup. Renren’s Fengche also treads on the toes of smaller sites like Weyup, which made a localized version of the Gogobot travel community.
Having been in private beta for a while, Fengche is launching with over 2,500 trips being documented and posted to the site. Interestingly, the Renren ownership is being played down, perhaps to give this new venture a chance to bring in new users to the Facebook-like site at a time when Chinese web users have been more keen on engaging on microblogs like Sina Weibo.
Grab the Fengche app for iOS or Android from the homepage.
「Fengche」 iOS版/Android版アプリのダウンロードはFengcheのホームページで。
iOSあるいはAndroid用Fengcheアプリのダウンロードはこちらのホームページから。