The founder of Facebook is coming to China. Time to bust out the fireworks, firecrackers and fanfare… except Facebook is blocked to China (and has been, for a while).
Therein lies the problem. It’s clear the Facebook CEO wants to make an imprint on one of the largest internet markets, but the Chinese population doesn’t have access to the social networking site. Instead, they’ve got Renren and Xiaonei to make up for that gaping need to post incriminating photos of friends.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said Zuckerberg would be visiting the restrictive country later this year, but it’s not clear when he’s going or what for. She’s made it pretty clear, though, that “it’s impossible to think about connecting the whole world right now without also connecting China.” And Facebook wants to connect to the whooole world.
Even better, Zuckerberg is brushing up on his grasp of Chinese. Now that’s an undertaking that makes learning Spanish seem fácil. And we’re not presuming the CEO is headed overseas just to brush up on his chopsticks skills and tour Tiananmen Square.
Well, hopefully China’s netizens will get an inkling of who Zuckerberg is when he visits, and that the CEO is more successful than the giant search engine company whom we shall not name. Well, if they don’t know Zuckerberg, they do know The Social Network.
(via Reuters)
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