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.
Mark Zuckerberg, Time's newly minted Person of the Year, has kicked off
a trip to China today by touring the offices of Baidu, China's most
popular search engine, and sitting
down to lunch with Baidu CEO Robin Li. The Facebook
CEO has previously signaled his interest in China--which has blocked
his website since 2009--as a critical market for expansion in his quest
to knit the world together through social networking.
On Twitter, Baidu spokesman Kaiser Kuo cautioned,
"C'mon people. Robin and Mark have known each other for a while ... Keep the speculation in check."
Speculation quashed? Not so much:
- China Represents A Giant Hole for Facebook, says Tim Bradshaw at The Financial Times: "That 1.3bn-person hole in the Facebook network was illustrated by the map released last week showing the blue lines connecting people around the world--leaving China almost entirely in the dark." Bradshaw wonders whether a relationship with Baidu could "break Facebook through the great firewall."
- But It's A Risky Move, states
Oliver Chiang at Forbes: Yes, China has over 1.6 billion people and around 300 million Internet users, Chiang concedes, but U.S. tech companies like Google, which left China earlier in the year, have found it a difficult place to operate and clashed with Chinese authorities over censorship issues.
- Would Facebook Be Willing to Do What Google Wasn't? asks Max Read at Gawker, who notes that Baidu censors its search results: "To what extent will Facebook censor itself, and what kind of government controls and backdoors will be allowed?"
- There's Little Hope for Facebook in China, asserts
Matt Marshall at VentureBeat. The Chinese government would be very wary
of the social networking site, Marshall argues, since activists can use
it to organize protests: "As it is, there's a firestorm of protest
whenever Facebook tinkers with its privacy settings or advertising
policies. Add a Chinese presence to Facebook, and things would get
nastier for the young company. Yahoo has been severely criticized in
the past for handing over personal data to Chinese authorities. The
trove of personal data that Facebook carries on individuals is huge."
Marshall adds that Baidu is developing its own social network, Baidu
Talk, which resembles Twitter.
- And China Is A Highly Competitive Market for Social Media, adds David Pierson at The Los Angeles Times. He notes that China's largest Internet company, Tencent Holdings, has 637 million accounts for its instant messaging service whereas Facebook has 500 million accounts globally.
This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.
