When the movie Social Network became Golden Globe Nominee and Oscar Nominee, Chinese fans made the following Chinese version poster "Everything happens in this movie is coincidental. All websites mentioned are made-up by the writers, please do not try to access, especially facebook.com." And of course, the movie about a website to many Chinese that never existed will not be released in China. But the website now seems to have a chance.
Last year we saw Mark Zuckerberg's China visit photo all over Chinese SNS, and his guide is Li-Yanhong, CEO of the dominant search engine Bai-Du. It stirred some speculation about the partnership. Now April 2011, rumors come again. Rumor here and there say that Facebook has made a contract with Baidu to enter China market by the end of 2011 the earliest.
How to work with the rigorous censorship, not repeating the same road of Google has been a main concern from US press. But after so many years, I totally believe BaiDu's emergency responding system to delete any sensitive posts. The partnership with Baidu will probably secure Facebook from making any politically wrong mistakes. Plus, I really don't see too many people talking about politics on social network sites as on microblog. My interest is if it can change the content of the SNS in China.
Right now, either Kaixin or RenRen, two major SNS lack original personal content. In the US Facebook is known for its user personality. But in China, most people will only forward (even not copy & past) other people's content, and even worse, most them are gossip news from TMZ kinda websites, just startling titles and sensual photos. Ren Ren might be better than Kaixin from my observation, but still reading the same posts most the time. If Facebook can fundamentally encourage people to share their own photos and thoughts that will change the current SNS quandary. There are many ways, through better mobile interface/site interface or campaign (so many "talented" Internet writers in China). Though it is indeed challenging in a country where no copyright laws (or laws in general) and people are enthusiasm about human powered search and ethic judgement ruthlessly.
Eventually, the worst thing could happen is not Facebook retreats from China mainland market but becomes a GFWed Facebook. The lethal rumor I heard is that Facebook will just make a Chinese version which is not connected to the global database. It will be so disappointing that Facebook completely surrenders to Chinese media censorship and GFW without even trying. That is totally losing face.
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