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Saving Face(book) in China

Facebook.com has more than 500 million active users worldwide (July 2010) and is considered by many internet users across the globe to be the dominant social networking website; Hollywood have even made a film about its creation (The Social Network – based on the early development of Facebook by Zuckerberg will be released on 1^st October 2010).  However, usage of Facebook is small compared to other social networking sites frequented by the 420 million internet users in China.

The Chinese government first started regulating the internet in 1993, with the central aim of neutralizing critical online opinion. In 2009 the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter were banned due to the social and political commentary published on them. Western audiences may view the banning of social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace as a horrible deprivation of another western right and an outrageous censorship of the media by the Chinese government. The other side to this view would be that internet users in China don’t need the West’s precious Facebooks and Twitters – they have their own equivalents, which considering the access ban, trump Facebook every time.  The most popular social networking site in China is Qzone with approximately 388 million Chinese users, followed by 51.com with 160 million users and Ren Ren at 120 million users. Online social networking and micro-blogging (Twitter-type activity) is a big part of Chinese Internet use, though not via familiar western websites.

Some believe the Chinese government are keen to keep give their domestic enterprise an advantage by minimising external competition.  Domestic organisations can also be easier to control and the government are wary of the power of social networking sites to bring together groups and ideas. A specific government bureau is employed to monitor activity on social networking sites. One outcome of this policy is a reduction in the variety of competition, an essential element in driving motivation for the improvement of services and encouraging innovation to create new and better technology, all of which keep a market moving forward.

Nonetheless, the competition between domestic Chinese sites is fierce, but it should also be noted that many Chinese Internet users are a member of more than 1 SNS (2.8 sites on average according to the Chinese Internet Network Information Centre). Aside from the big three Chinese online social networks, there are also many other smaller Chinese sites competing for usage. All these factors make the Chinese online social networking market difficult to crack, especially by a Western company such as Facebook.

The use of social networking sites differs between countries and cultures. For instance, the way that social networking sites are used to promote brands and products in the West is considerably different to China. Social networking sites are designed locally to suit the people using them. Therefore it would be ineffective to just take a global social networking site, such as Facebook, and simply localise it to Chinese culture through mere translation alone.  Social networking sites looking to break into the Chinese market need to be very in tune with Chinese culture, values and the current phenomena in online social networking.

According to Facebook there are more than 70 translations available on their site and approximately 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States. Facebook users are increasing in other parts of Asia such as Indonesia and Malaysia, but Facebook is still insignificant in China. The government legislation which bans access to Facebook plays a part in its minimal number of users, as prior to the banning, Facebook users were increasing in China.

Zuckerburg, co-founder of Facebook, recently outlined the company’s plans to move into Asia markets with an aim to acquire 500 million users in Asia over the next 5 years. Aside from the small issue of legalising access to Facebook in China, Zuckerburg and co. will still have to entice existing users from the likes of Qzone and Ren Ren; a challenging feat even for a multi-million dollar company such as Facebook.

Research has shown that the specific use of social networking websites varies between countries. In China there is a larger focus on social network gaming, thus in order for Facebook to become as popular as existing Chinese social networks it may need to adapt its applications and services to meet the needs of the Chinese social network consumer.  For instance, approximately 68 million Chinese people spend a significant amount of time playing online games - of which 88 percent do so via social networks, according to a survey conducted by Niko Partners (March 2010). The online gaming industry in China is big business and the big social networking sites provide free access to a huge range, including the most popular ones such as Happy Farm, a version of which is also available on Facebook. Facebook can learn from the Chinese social networking sites with regards to gaming and improve the gaming applications it offers. This sort of adaption and improvement can be good for the industry as it offers internet users more choice and better services, as websites must keep standards high to compete for users.

There are other differences between the Western and Chinese social networking sites.  Though Ren Ren was initially thought of as a copy of Facebook there are aspects of Ren Ren which are different and potentially better than Facebook. For example, Ren Ren provides a writing application to express your thoughts, similar to a journal, whereas Facebook only lets you do this through short “statuses”. This allows users to be a lot more proactive and expressive in their online social networking. Another big difference between Facebook and Ren Ren is the privacy. Ren Ren allows users to see who has visited their profiles; this is not the case on Facebook. Though some would argue that Facebook is right to keep their users’ activity private, others believe that this decreases mindless browsing and encourages people to only use Ren Ren to communicate with people they have a genuine connection with.

Online social networking in China is very well established and even if the government were to remove the censorship of sites such as Facebook and Twitter, it would not guarantee a massive increase in Chinese members. Facebook are aware of the challenges they face to break into Asia and particularly China. The unblocking of western social networking sites could be beneficial for both Chinese and Western sites as they learn from each other’s strengths and weaknesses. It will be interesting to see how they meet these challenges and what the markets can learn from each other to shape the future of world-wide online social networking.

Josephine Seymour