With 1.3 billion inhabitants China presents the perfect setting for social networking sites to broaden their user community. However, online giants struggle to enter the People’s Republic, where millions of users choose for the national Facebook clone: Qzone.
With only 1,452,000 Chinese members, Facebook fails massively to gather a Chinese audience. In contrast to Google, it’s not the government that prevents the largest social networking site from recruiting citizens of the biggest country of the world, but Chinese alternatives. The Chinese youngsters prefer to connect online via Qzone, a social networking extension of the most popular instant messaging program in the Asian country. The all-Chinese website gathers a user community of 376 million registered accounts and already ranks 10th on the Alexa Global ranking (2010). In comparison, Facebook connects 400 million users… Worldwide.
Qzone
The reason for the success of local SNS players on the Chinese market can mainly be found in cultural differences. The applications on the social networking site appear to hold the key to the Chinese success. Games, quizzes and tests are massively marketed and almost get a viral aspect. Pushy app requests that force users to invite other members or perform various kinds of tasks before entering are extremely common. Interaction with other players and advertisers is also much higher than on Western applications. This typical variation doesn’t only attract more users, it’s also an attractive business model as Chinese social networking sites are much more profitable than their Western counterparts. If Facebook ultimately wants to compete in China, it will have to make clear alterations for its Chinese audience.
Sources
http://techcrunch.com/2009/04/05/chinese-social-networks-virtual
ly-out-earn-facebook-and-myspace-a-market-analysis/
http://venturebeat.com/2009/02/24/who-can-get-the-bigger-social-
network-china-or-everywhere-else-combined/
http://digital.venturebeat.com/2010/03/17/china%E2%80%99s-tenc
ent-1-8-billion-in-2009-revenues%E2%80%94what-facebook-could-
learn/?obref=obnetwork
