China’s leading social network site, Xiaonei, changed its name to Renren, which means “everyone” in Chinese on August 4. (Read announcement from official site.) It is quite strange that an already famous brand would change its name, as this might alienate exisiting and potential users.

But, Xiaonei, which means “inside the school”, might not be situable anymore, as the facebook-like online community is no longer just an alumni site for university students. Today its members include many office workers. In the future, people from all sorts of life might be its members, too. At least, that is the ambition of the site’s CEO, Joe Chen, who wants to be the king of China’s Web 2.0. Chen, through his company Oak Pacific, also controls community sites, Mop.com, Kaixin.com and several web game companies.

Industry insider said eventual Chen is going to merge his social networks with online games.

“In China, online games are huge. Social games and web games can be an important way to generate revenue on our site. A small percentage of paying users is enough,” said Chen in an early interview.

Global Times, a newspaper in China, is running a series about the book- one article a week. It started in May 2009 and has been going on for the last 2 months. .

This week’s article is about Xiaonei and 51.com – the Chinese answers to Facebook and Myspace. The two realized that merging social networking sites with online games could be a formula for success in China. Read Global Times’ article.

The person in the picture is Joe Chen – China’s king of Web 2.0. He owns Xiaonei and a bunch of other online communty / social networking sites