Earlier this year I read an article in Fast Company called “The Fake Facebooks of China”. Because the Chinese bans Facebook, along with Twitter and Google, the door is wide open for imitation sites, that follow Facebook’s format for sharing information, and connecting people. According to the article, China’s top Facebook look-a-like, a site named RenRen, is worth “as much as several billion dollars.” That’s big money. Enough to make Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s new investors figure out some way to get the real Facebook past China’s e-walls. According to The Atlantic, Facebook has reached a deal with China’s Baidu, the country’s largest search engine. Together, the two will construct a Facebook that meets the Chinese government’s tight censorship guidelines. The move helps both companies. If Facebook successfully moves into China it’s size, global reach, and amounts of data will grow tremendously. For Baidu, they jump into China’s increasing social network industry with the originator of it all.
It will be interesting to see what Facebook has to do in order to be allowed into China, and what role it will play in sharing information with China’s government. One thing is known, huge opportunity awaits, and Facebook just keeps getting bigger.