MSN China has signed an agreement with the social networking site Renren in China to connect features across the two sites. The deal was announced this morning. It’s the latest in a series of partnerships signed by Microsoft in the country in recent months.
The companies say the agreement will bring unified log-in, synchronization of content between the two sites, and shared features for finding and communicating with friends. LiveSide.net has screenshots showing the ability to log into Renren with a Windows Live ID and, once a user’s accounts are connected, post automatically to the Windows Live Messenger social feed from Renren, for example.
News site PaidContent.org says the Renren-MSN partnership suggests that Microsoft — a minority investor in Facebook — doesn’t have much faith in Facebook’s ability to make an impact in China in the short term. Access to Facebook has been blocked in the country since 2009.
Microsoft expanded its partnership with China’s Baidu search engine in July and just yesterday announced an agreement with China Standard Software Co. to jointly develop and sell cloud cloud computing technologies in the country.
MSN China is a joint venture of Microsoft and the Shanghai Alliance Investment Co.
