Renren, a Facebook homologue in China with over 160 million users, has announced that it plans an initial public offering in the United States. The IPO is expected to go as high as $500 million and would be the first social network service to go public, as Facebook & Co. refrained from listing shares.

Social media is having a massive growth spurt in China at the moment. Especially as the government has banned Facebook, Skype and Twitter, national social media sites such as Renren are gaining traction. Social media’s importance has been demonstrated in the latest civil unrests in Africa and Middle East, but Chinese officials do not feel threatened at all by social media power. Government control, that goes under the epic name of ‘Great Firewall’, is about to get even tighter according to Zhou Yongkang, domestic security chief in China, as the Chinese police foiled an anonymous appeal for people to start a “Jasmine Revolution” by protesting in 13 Chinese cities on Sunday.

Reports from December 2010 show that over 450 million Chinese have access to internet and despite close censorship controls by the government the online business is blossoming. Baidu, Google’s homologue in China has seen extensive growth in the past five years, starting with a 25 percent market share and presently covering 70 percent of the market. Internet messenger services offered by QQ and Alibaba, increased by 273 percent and respectively by 225 percent since 2009 until now.

Two weeks ago we saw the growing interest in Chinese online video as well, when PPLive received received $250 million as an investment from Softbank, the operation representing the Series D Round financing for the online video company. The investment is really indicative of a larger trend in video, which is gaining speed on a global scale.  Several video companies in China are of interest right now, for their growing numbers and technology potential as monetization methods become validated online.