If you don’t have kids who go to school in China, you might not be aware of SanRenXing. I wasn’t. Spinning the wheel of Chinese startups, I came across it by chance and was attracted by the name. San ren xing means “three people walking.” It’s an allusion to the famous saying from the Analects of Confucius: “When there are three people walking, one must be my teacher.” The sentiment — that anyone can learn from anyone — seemed especially appropriate for a company whose focus is education. So I clicked.
I came to learn that SanRenXing has actually been around for a while. It’s basically a social networking and organization platform that allows schools, students, teachers, and parents to interact with each other, share news and information, and complete projects. While it’s no RenRen or anything, it’s definitely no chump in the social networking field. Back in 2009, the site had about 2.1 million registered users. Some experimenting with the new site, followed by some quick calculations, leads me to estimate that it has even more now; possibly well over ten million.
It turns out that this summer, SanRenXing is in the process of transitioning from its old site and domain to a new one. And it doesn’t take much time browsing the new one to figure out where SanRenXing got its inspiration for the design and the new UX: Sina Weibo.
Any Weibo users out there will immediately recognize the layout, and the experience is almost exactly the same, right down to the 140 character limit. Of course, SanRenXing has some special features for classes and schools. Users can follow any school they want, and apply to join classes they or their children are a part of (pending the approval of a teacher or school administrator). Some of what the schools post is pretty detailed; at one primary school I looked at, I was able to see the homework for a particular class, as well as the order of its courses each day (today, language arts is first period).
Obviously, SanRenXing already has a bit of a captive audience in its already-significant user base, but I wonder if the overt copying of Weibo could backfire. A lot of what is possible on SanRenXing could be possible with Weibo groups. It wouldn’t be as streamlined or as targeted an experience, but for teachers and schools, the advantage would be that Weibo is where many of their students already are. And trying to get them to convert to a new platform that looks like a carbon copy of their old platform could be a tough sell.
I am neither a student nor a parent nor a teacher, though, so SanRenXing is not for me. Perhaps there is something there that gives students and teachers an experience they can’t find elsewhere. But in terms of attracting new users, I suspect SanRenXing will be overshadowed by Sina Weibo until it can temper its new design with a bit of unique flavor. Right now, it just feels like Weibo lite.
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