Is Facebook reaching out to China?
Is Facebook reaching out to China, despite all the obstacles? The social networking site has opened an office in Hong Kong - putting it within tantalising reach of businesses in the worldʼs biggest Internet market. As the headline in Business Week put it; "Facebook Moves Closer to China Advertisers With Hong Kong Office."
Facebook currently has no customers from China and has not been accessible there since 2009. China also blocks Twitter and Googleʼs YouTube. Home grown websites must self-censor pornography and gambling, and political topics such as Tibet are out.
Despite these negatives, the temptation to find a way in - any way in - is huge: the country had 457 million Internet users at the end of last year more than the populations of the U.S. and Japan together.
Mark Zuckerberg visited China in December, and met executives at local Internet companies including Baidu Inc. and Sina Corp.
The official aim of the office in Hong Kong, is to boost business in the former British colony,and in Taiwan. Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China and has separate Internet regulations from China.
However, Chinese companies who want to sell overseas may “potentially” buy advertising from Facebook, Jayne Leung, who heads the Hong Kong sales operations told Business Week in an interview .
Leung, a former executive at Google ,said she couldnʼt confirm if Chinese companies were already buying advertising by placing orders on Facebookʼs website, rather than through the direct sales division.
Blake Chandlee, a vice-president at Facebook, this week addressed a meeting in Hong Kong, as part of Social Media Week, a local event, but declined to comment on Facebookʼs plans for China.
Expert Eric Wen told the magazine the record of foreign Internet companies succeeding in China was "very, very poor,” But, Facebook could gain access to local users by investing in Chinese Internet companies, or focus on non-core areas such as video.
Meantime Indonesia is expected to remain Facebookʼs biggest market outside of the U.S. in numbers of users, Chandlee said.