If you ask Chinese internet users, most will be skeptical of Facebook's prospects in the country. The social media market was already dominated by Chinese companies, there seems little left for a new player. Even my fellow Chinese in US spend more time on RenRen, QQ and such than Facebook and Twitter. Understanding the rules and consumer preferences in this lucrative market is difficult as hell. The Chinese are more willing to flock to a domestic copycat of a service innovated by the west, even the copycat was inferior. They will complain about how the domestic version is buggy, lousy, unethical and evil, but still choose it over a western alternative. I have wondered why for quite a few years, and still cannot come up with a logical answer. Yet one example had once offered me part of the explanation. Giant Interactive is a leading online MMO company in China, when they stared their games weren't as good as Korean or US ones; but they sent thousands of employees out and installed their game in countless internet cafes in the second tiers cities across the country, along with their other Chinese dirty tricks, Giant managed to captivate millions of players and secured their revenue stream. The Chinese companies are simply closer to its audience, they can afford to go to their audience, literally face to face. The key to success of almost all local Chinese companies, lies in the millions of outdated computers piled in the cheap rooms of low-class internet cafes in lower-income cities and rural areas: places quite impossible for international companies to reach.
if facebook could enter china, we'd have a triopoly of china, the us, and russia