Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Missng somethng Facebook?


Facebook, unlike the other tech giants of our time [uh, Google], prides itself on having one clear objective: make everything social. But in a recent interview with Charlie Rose, Sheryl Sandberg happily stated that if your mission is to connect the world and you're not in China then you're not connecting the world. And according to McKinsey’s iConsumer China Survey China has the most active population when it comes to social media and social media [it turns out] has a greater influence on purchasing decisions for consumers in China than for the rest of us.  

In fact, Chinese consumers admit to being more likely to consider buying a product if they see it mentioned on a social-media site and are more likely to purchase a product or service if a friend or acquaintance recommends it on a social-media site. Welcome news to Facebook’s counterparts in China like RenRen that abide by the state’s online censorship rules while amassing a growing numbers of engaged users in the process.

There are calls for Facebook’s line of attack to look beyond simply finding a local partner to obtain the truckload of licenses required to operate such a broad-based platform and instead think through its offering in a market that could be more about smartphone services than blindly trying to replicate it’s social networking model.

With Chinese e-commerce expected to triple by 2015 and take in 20 percent more than the projection for the US market it’ll be soon time to see what lessons have been learnt [and which errors will be repeated] since the last attempt was made by a large US tech company [uh, Google] to pass the Great Chinese Firewall.  






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