Breaking into China's Internet market is hard for US companies as China has popular homegrown Internet sites for things like search, social networking and more. However that doesn't mean US companies can't make inroads into perhaps the single biggest Internet audience there is. Indeed about 480 million of China's citizens use the Internet. Today Reuters reports that Microsoft has made a deal with the Chinese social networking service Renren that will allow the two companies to work together for various ventures.
The deal was made specifically with Microsoft's MSN division. Under the terms of the agreement, Renren will work with MSN to help provide a universal login that can be used by both sites. It will also allow the two sites to share other things like status updates and photos. Renren's chief operating officer Liu Jian called the deal a "win-win situation". This is the second deal in two months that Microsoft has made with a major Chinese-based Internet site. In July it made an agreement with the Baidu search engine site to help create an English language version of its site.
Renren launched its public stock offering here in the US earlier this year on the New York Stock Exchange but it has since seen its stock price go well below its initial IPO level. Earlier this month the company announced that it had recorded revenues of $30.4 million in the second quarter of 2011. It also said it generated a small profit of $751,000 in the second quarter.
