HootSuite cosying up to China nicely with new Renren and language updates

Social management tool HootSuite is taking measures to entrench itself in the Chinese market, reports The Next Web. The company announced that it now supports Simplified Chinese and would be integrating Renren (China’s answer to Facebook) into the HootSuite App Directory.

“The Simplified Chinese user face is to serve Mandarin-speaking owls who have access to HootSuite in China as well as the ex-pat community all around the world,” says the service.

A few weeks ago the service included China’s Sina Weibo microblogging service and it is currently pushing out a Traditional Chinese version of its service.

According to Tech in Asia, Sina Weibo has 400-million registered users but no one really knows how many are monthly active users today.

Renren currently boasts 170-million users, is one of a few Chinese social networks listed in the New York Stock Exchange and is the largest real name social network in China.

“With Renren integration, HootSuite will allow Chinese audience to manage multiple social networks at the same time,” says HootSuite.

Renren for HootSuite features include:

• Sharing Renren content to your social networks
• Posting your status updates to Renren, including photo uploads
• Viewing a stream of status updates from your Renren network
• Liking, commenting and re-posting your friends’ posts

To use HootSuite in Simplified Chinese, choose by clicking Settings > Preferences then select Simplified Chinese (or any other desired language) from the pull-down menu.