The registration of a local web address in China has created speculation that the social networking site Facebook is planning to target the World's second largest internet market. At the moment, the domain name facebook.com.cn (".cn" being a commonly used suffix for Chinese domain names) redirects to facebook.com - and facebook.cn is registered by U.S based Facebook Inc. But what Facebook is actually planning to do with these acquisitions is yet to be seen and the enquires of Reuters.com have yielded no answers from Facebook as of yet.
Maybe Facebook are just staking their claims early to avoid the copyright issues that have hampered Google in China. Or maybe they are intending to release additional language interfaces and enter the Chinese market, as reported on the Chinese website China-cbn.com .
China's love of social networking sites, unsurprising considering the extent to which Chinese society is built on personal connections, make it a lucrative market to crack - especially with more than 162 million internet users to target. Facebook currently claims to attract 250, 000 new users a day and has recently benefited from a deal struck with Microsoft, who valued the firm at $15 billion.
Many of the existing social networking sites in China have been condemned as 'copycats' of the big western players. Isaac Mao, an internet investor and a Chinese blogging pioneer told Economist.com that about 10% of the 200 plus YouTube copycat sites in China are backed by venture capital while comparisons have been drawn between xiaonei.com and Facebook. The Chinese paper Diya Caijing Riabao claimed that Facebook is planning to acquire one of these existing sites - but the recent domain name acquisition could suggest a different game plan. Either way, if Facebook can tap into China's social networking market, they may have a whole lot of new friends to add to their collection!
