Several Disadvantages about Renren website

人人网是一个社交网站，成立于2005的校内网的名义下，或校园网。最初，它是作为一个平台，让学生分享心情，写日记和发布相关的日常生活的照片。然而，后更名为“人人网”，社会上的每个人都能访问到这个网站，这使得它更类似于“facebook”。作为其主要功能仍然存在，它还提供了一个更大的平台，人们可以通过张贴照片，杂志，甚至音乐和视频与对方交流。资源可以在这个社交网站共享，这种高效的平台正加速在中国互联网用户中互动。然而，俗话说，每一个硬币都有正反两面。因此，本文将讨论这一热门社交网站所带来的一些不足和问题。

Outline

I. Introduction

II. Body

A. Disadvantages about Renren social network site

B. Solution to the real-name system 

I) Introduction

Renren is a social networking site, which was founded in 2005 under the name of Xiaonei, or “inside school”. Originally, it was functioned as a platform for students to share feelings, write journals and post pictures related to their daily life. However, after it changed its name into “Renren”, everyone in the society could get access to this website, which makes it more similar to “Facebook”. As its main functions remain, it also provides the public with a greater platform in which people could interact with each other through posting photos, journals, or even music and videos. Resources can be shared on this networking site and this efficient platform is accelerating Internet users’ interactions within China.

However, as a saying goes, every coin has two sides, which means positive and negative sides. Therefore, this essay will talk about some disadvantages and problems caused by this popular social network site.

II) Body

A) Disadvantages about Renren social network site

1. Comparing issues

Based on the visitors’ statistics, more visits means that you have a more interesting and attractive homepage. No doubt that this will show your personal charisma. But sometimes, this can cause some problems such as comparing issues among friends. People use statistics to compare with friends to satisfy their vanity. To be more specific, let us take an imaginary situation as an example. If both of you and your friend have Renren homepages, but according to your homepages visits’ statistics, you attract much more attention from others than your friend, so your vanity is satisfied for certain, but what will your friend think about you? There is a possibility that this will be detrimental to friendships among you and your friends.

2. Restrictions of visiting homepages

There is one rule that if you want to access one’s homepage, you need to add him or her into your Renren friends list. Two possible problems could emerge under this circumstance. First, you need to send invitation to this person to get approval, but what if he or she does not want to be Renren friends with you? Then this homepage you want to read through would remain inaccessible to you. Secondly, if we are merely interested or curious about the things posted by strangers, sending friends invitation is a little awkward and troublesome without the intention to be friends.

3. Compulsive registration

Sometimes, we search those topics and contents we are interested in on the network search engines like google or baidu, and accidentally we only find something related to these interesting topics on Renren website. However, those things are accessible only if people finish their registration in this website. Especially when we are in an urgent situation where we need to reference materials on Renren website immediately, but unfortunately we do not have a Renren account and the person who publishes those materials is not in our friends list. In a situation like this, our time and energy could be wasted.

4. The real-name system

To some extent, users’ personal information can be exposed during the registration process. On one hand, some friendships only exists on the Internet, they are not actual friends in real life. Therefore, they do not want their private information to be exposed to each other. However, on the other hand, this real-name system can be beneficial to crime detection. If criminals had Renren account, which means they use their real name and ID numbers to register, then the police would be capable of knowing criminals’ personal information to speed up detection process.

B) Solution to the real-name system

There is one method to solve the problem of real-name system. Renren could require people to use real name then they register, but only nicknames can be seen on their homepage. In this way, if your friends in real life would like to add you as their Renren friends, they just need to search our real name in the system then add us as Renren friends. As for some strangers, they can find and add us by searching our nicknames on our homepage. This would be an excellent “best of both worlds” solution which can protect our privacy and provide us with a platform to interact simultaneously.