Facebook in China?

I was reading the Toronto Star on Thursday and came across an article called “Facebook eyes fight to crack China”. It was about how Facebook wishes to re-enter China as a major social networking site. Not many western sites have been allowed, only a few such as Amazon, Google, Ebay and Yahoo. Facebook had originally tried in 2008 after extensive negotiating, but following the riots in Xinjiang, China blocked them and other western news agencies, including Twitter, in 2009. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/24/china-trials-xinjiang-riots)

The article went on to talk about how Facebook is late getting into the Chinese social networking market since there are a number of already very popular sites available to the public such as; Sina Corp, Renren Inc, and Tencent Holdings to name a few. Of the 1.3 billion people in the country, half of the 500 million internet users already use social networking sites. According to Mr. Leung of CLSA, “It will be very difficult for Facebook to introduce something that will allow them to differentiate themselves.” I believe that Facebook will not have to differentiate themselves since if Facebook brings a way for the Chinese to communicate with the rest of the world; the users that were limited to Chinese only social networks may want to reach out to the already 850 million users on Facebook.

It would be interesting to know how many Chinese students who are studying in Canada switched to Facebook. Not knowing any Chinese social networking sites first hand, it would also be interesting to know what factor or feature made them switch over.