Sure, Facebook Looks Good in Chinese and in Russian, But Is It Even Wanted?
by
on June 21, 2008,
Facebook fans look to the social networks most recent ComScore numbers as a sure sign of worldwide domination, and touted the release of Chinese and Russian translations of the site as the best thing since sliced bread. In reality, the release of Chinese and Russian versions may be too little too late for two markets that already have their own established social networks. While Web 2.0 seems almost dominated by products from and designed for English speakers, both China and Russia offer plenty of competition for Facebook, and have many apps that have already gained a mainstream audience.
In Russia, Facebook has competition from at least three social networks. VKontake is a Facebook clone, possibly created with the downloadable application Kootali that lets users create a customized social network that looks virtually identical to Facebook, with only the applications missing (but really, would you miss the ability to throw sheep?)
Besides Vkontake, Russia has Odnoklassniki, which has over 10 million users. Geared more toward finding fellow alumni (the literal translation of the name is classmate) and connecting with them. Our own Svetlana describes it as "a very simple network… only intended to find former classmates, exchange message and show off photos in the various places you've visited to make your classmates envy you." She estimates that it's the third-best-known Internet brand in Russia.
China already has the same environment as Russia, with another Facebook clone called Xiaonei.com, which not only has the lion's share of the social networking audience in China, but has more money than Facebook has, having raised $430 million (USD) in investment capital. How can Facebook compete against a company that has more money that it does JUST for running in China?
It's going to take more than a localized translation to move Facebook into these markets, and I'm not sure that they are ready, or willing, to invest the time and energy to fight against the established locals. The translations may be more of a "nice to have" than the next step in a purported world domination tour.
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Bighorn
kalipso
Opensource 
Michael Fidler 
China numbers are far larger than US numbers for anything significant, such as mobile phone users, etc. Just a few months ago, China passed the US in numbers of Internet users. Mobile phone users are already more than 500M.
The big question for Facebook and Xiaonei is how well they will be able to monetize their user base. If there is one thing Facebook’s miserable revenue numbers have shown it’s that it’s much better at aggregating users and their friends, but when it comes to monetization, well, it stinks. The Web 2.0 marketing hype has gotten too far ahead of market realities, which is the definition of a bubble.
The big question is whether Facebook, Xiaonei and the other clones will be able to get meaningful revenue through advertising or other means. My own interpretation is that the more money a company has in its bank account, the lazier it will get about monetization, pushing it further back into the future, and creating a market opportunity for a leaner, meaner and hungrier competitor.
Good points Paul. It is also crucial to note ad-spend within specific geographies. The US currently garners an obscenely larger percentage of the total ad-spend than any other region, and the #1 SocNet here is MySpace.
Another point about why Facebook may be too late to come to Russia is that the Odnoklassniki.ru has already gone mainstream. I watched TV reporters mentioning the site wherever appropriate at least once a day (together with the rest of the country) and I thought the guys behind the network were doing a great PR campaign. But I came to realize what exactly mainstream Odnoklassniki.ru was when I had to wait for almost an hour to make a quick photo for a visa because a 40-something woman tried to have the photographer make a perfect picture of her so that she could use it on the network and not look her age on it
This was kind of a revelation to me - and now that I know how busy mainstream users are hunting for the people they did not care to personally meet even once in 10 years and chatting with them online to demonstrate everything they achieved, I am totally sure there is hardly enough space for some outsider translated into Russian.
P.S. What I am thankful for to Facebook is that they did not default the language setting to me based on my IP (only offered to change the language once), Google still makes me use Russian no matter how hard I persuade them that I prefer their services to be in English for me.
I wish I knew Russian
and I wish there was more interconnectivity between social networks. It would be great to be able to “go visiting” other social networks or maybe create new social arenas, without having to buy into someone elses idea of a social network.
Where is the 3rd Russian competitor? 1 and 2 are Russian , the 3rd one mentioned in your article is Chinese or did you mean this last one is visited by Chinese speaking Russians ?
China. Its copycat of facebook has raised more momney than facebook. Furthermore, since I am of an asian/chinese heirtage I can say that xiaonei has done a pretty good job at replicating facebook not to mention other perks. Also, to conclude, there are a lot of ppl in china and its different provinces’ so …
The latest Chinese SNS site is kaixin001.com which has really taken off by adding SMS messaging capabilities. The main social tool in China is the mobile phone, kaixin001.com has benefited from adding this capability.