Facebook Expands Its Market as it Penetrates China

Posted by Vaibhav

June 24, 2008

World renowned online social networking domain Facebook.com has declared a simplified Chinese version of its website aiming mainland Chinese internet surfers. China being the world’s leading Internet market, the move is taken in an effort to contend with local as well as overseas competitors across the globe.

Chinese IM admirer ‘Tencent’ and Facebook seemed all geared to join the online battle for China’s social networks, as the two have launched Chinese sites only recently.

Users signing in into the website from the Chinese mainland are redirected to ‘zh-cn.facebook.com’, where users can opt between versions in traditional or simplified Chinese.

The world-wide social networking leader has already released several internationalized editions of its service, including a French, Spanish and German version. The strategic stance of targeting the swiftly growing Chinese market makes sense for Facebook, as it has already surpassed MySpace to become the leading social networking site globally. However, it still trails MySpace as far as the US market is concerned.

In Novemeber last year, there was an outbreak of rumors that Facebook was eyeing to buy Zhanzuo.com, one of several mid-sized Chinese social networks, comprising of around seven million subscribers. Nevertheless, the acquisition did not materialize. Presently, 51.com is the largest social network in China with above a staggering 60 million users.

Compared to its largest online rival MySpace, Facebook has been late in launching a Chinese-language version of its site, as MySpace had already set a foot in the Chinese market way back in 2006.

As far the website layout is concerned, Facebook doesn’t seem to have made any alterations to cater to the Chinese market, but rather just focused on the translation aspect.

The online market in China is already crowded and it will be interesting to see whether Facebook stands out in the competition and creates a dominating position against other popular local social networks such as 51.com, Xiaonei, Xiaoyou, and Zhanzuo.

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