Facebook to enter China: CBN report
A report on China-cbn.com (the website of Diyi Caijing Ribao, in Chinese) cites an “industry insider” who says that Facebook plans to release additional language interfaces and intends to enter the China market as early as December this year. The paper claims that Facebook has given up its initial plan to set up its own China-based site like MySpace has done with MySpace.cn, but will instead acquire an existing SNS in China. Who do you suppose that could be? I can think of a couple of likely acquisition targets…
13 comments thus far
And does is mean Facebook is getting itself blocked, just like YouTube did?
Posted by Fons Tuinstra on October 30, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Zhanzuo and Xiaonei are the most obvious matches when it comes to site design, but how much of a match are they really? Do they have enough users to give Facebook a lead on MySpace? What about forming a partnership with Mop or some similar site instead?
Posted by Brendan on October 30, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Have you heard of myspace being blocked in China?
Posted by damon on October 30, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Whatever they do i hope they seamlessly their link Chinese version to their English version. Click …and swithc language. Those who are perfectly bilingual ( which i am NOT) should be able to communicate with their Chinese friends in Chinese and with their non-chinese friends in english … without changing platforms. Otherwise 2 monoligual silos will be created. That would be - from a mutual understanding point of view- a missed opportunity.
Posted by Jan van den bergh on October 30, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Fons: As far as I know, Facebook is not blocked. Certain linked content, like YouTube videos, is blocked, but YouTube is blocked anyway.
Jan: This could be tricky. It depends on the attitude the government could take. Essentially, a user being able to type something into Facebook would trigger the ‘government regulation angle’ provided the server was in China or the interface was in Chinese. As long as Facebook could keep a UI separation but a logical connection it may just work, I don’t fancy the chances. Didn’t work for Flickr or YouTube, barely worked for Google (search).
Posted by Alex on October 30, 2007 at 11:08 pm
In something like six months, the number of people who have signed onto the China regional network has grown from around 30,000 to over 100,000. I don’t track the figures, but it seems to be a fast growing network. Anyway, no one knows what the government or various ISPs will do.
Posted by Paul M on October 31, 2007 at 3:55 am
We will be left with anything! I just hope that LinkedIn will not have the good idea to make a Chinese version.
Posted by China and I on October 31, 2007 at 8:46 am
Not getting blocked is very likely the reasoning behind buying into an already established company, with preexisting censorship in place.
The amount of work it would take to modify the Facebook language files to have a Chinese version is a non-issue, so the delay in creating a Chinese version is very likely just a political one, which in turn is a business one.
Posted by The Humanaught on October 31, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Let’s not jump the gun here, folks. This is an unattributed report and no one I know is aware of any sniffing around that FB people have actually done here. Believe me, I would know if they were really, really serious about a China entry. If I were a bettin’ man, I’d say that December date is really premature.
Posted by Kaiser Kuo on November 1, 2007 at 8:28 am
Oh, and the Reuters report you may have read that says Facebook Inc has registered the domain name Facebook.cn–that’s not by any means proof positive that they have China entry plans either. It’s an inexpensive hedge. I’ll bet it was registered a long, long time ago. In fact… yep, March 4, 2005–more than two-and-a-half years ago.
Posted by Kaiser Kuo on November 1, 2007 at 8:33 am
[...] post one little item, picked up from the Chinese press report citing an unnamed industry insider (note, not even a [...]
Posted by A Facebook China entry? Not so fast, people… on November 1, 2007 at 8:57 am
QQ, which is run by Tencent, and is quite possibly the largest tech company in China, yet virtually unheard of in the West, has a some social networking services, not to mention incredible name recognition in China. They would stand to be a company worth partnering with, if anything, just to eliminate the potential competition.
Posted by Ben Ross on November 7, 2007 at 3:19 am
they have to take in aacount 360Quan.com China’s 2nd Largest Social Network, and the fastest growing website in the history of online China, it is ranked Largest Friend Finder Website, 8th Largest Community-based Website
Posted by tina a on April 3, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Post a new comment