Facebook prepares for Chinese market

Jeremy Goldkorn

The popular social network Facebook, claiming 39 million users, has been making moves that suggests it is ready to enter the Chinese market very soon, writes Times Online. That is going to be an interesting move where so many of its online predecessors have failed, for almost every reason you can imagine.
Not surprisingly, the article also features two of the speakers at Chinabiz Speakers, Kaiser Kuo of Ogilyvy and Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei. Jeremy Goldkorn:

"I don't think they'll fare well - there's not a single foreign internet company that has managed to dominate its sector," said Jeremy Goldkorn, editor of danwei.org, an English-language site that tracks the Chinese media industry. Mr Golkorn cited the example of Google, which still trails Baidu.com, the dominant Chinese search engine, despite launching its Chinese language site in 2006, and Yahoo! China, which is not as popular as local portals such as Sina.com and 163.net.

"It's also a cultural thing," Mr Goldkorn said. "Facebook is based on people using their real names and being honest, whereas the Chinese like the ability to be anonymous. E-mail addresses will rarely include a person's name, and on bulletin boards a lot of the posts are anonymous, so I'm not sure the Facebook model will work."