

Facebook to Set Up Standalone China Service With Baidu - sasvari
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-11/facebook-reaches-deal-for-china-site-with-baidu-sohu-com-says.html

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noahlt
Based on their past actions, I feel like Google or Twitter would never do
this, and that makes me respect them much more.

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liuliu
I failed to see the merit of such deal. In the high-end market, Baidu is
notorious for its reputation. In the low-end market, Baidu cannot compete with
Sina or Tencent, even RenRen. Facebook cannot enter a market with zero
traction of social networking in China because the market is so saturated.
Unfortunately, at this time of writing, Baidu has zero stake in social
networking. It probably makes sense to an outsider since Baidu has huge
Internet traffic. The sad part is, Baidu has tried, several times, but it
never got its finger on online identity (Baidu IM, Blog, Youa etc.. Yes, they
have their success in Baidu Tieba, but that's more like an online community
rather than portable identity for most people).

I've written about it before: <http://liuliu.me/%E9%9A%8F%E6%84%9F/facebooks-
china-strategy> and I will say it again, the joint venture thing never works,
it didn't work before, it won't work this time too.

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dy
I really think Americans have to either step up to the plate when it comes to
doing business with China or just STFU about all the issues we see over there.
We complain about human rights violations, lack of freedoms etc but then
continue to give this machine our money.

Voting with your voice means very little compared to voting with your wallet.
If this upsets you (it doesn't really upset me) then you should leave
Facebook.

When Google left China, it made me really admire and appreciate their service
(I can't imagine giving more time/money to Google than I already do :)

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HelloBeautiful
I really think non-Americans have to either step up to the plate when it comes
to doing business with US or just STFU about all the issues we see over there.
We complain about human rights violations, lack of freedoms etc but then
continue to give this machine our money.

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dotcoma
Two Facebooks, one for China and one for the rest of the world.

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Apocryphon
Why does FB need to set up a standalone service in China, when any other
foreign nation has the same FB as America's?

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gommm
To have a website in China you need an "ICP license".
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICP_license>

It forces you to follow rules, including censoring any comments that are about
the latest hot topics, censoring any critics and deliver any personal data
about your users if needed... The process for getting the license is quite a
bit of a pain so a lot of people don't get an ICP license for the first few
months of the website, but then there's always a chance that the website will
be blocked

