Facebook: Zhanzou.com Acquisition Rumors Are False
Posted by Nick O'Neill on November 19th, 2007 1:27 PMLast night after hearing about the rumored Zhanzou.com acquisition offer I sent a message to Facebook PR. I had seen rumors over the past week and they appeared to be unsubstantiated. As I wrote yesterday, the article didn’t appear to be confirming the acquisition offer. Otherwise the title of the article would have been the same as what Duncan Riley posted on Techcrunch. As I wrote this moring on my Social Times blog, we need higher standards for the leading industry blogs. That’s another discussion for a different time though.
As the Facebook PR representative has informed me, these acquisition rumors are completely and utterly false. No offer for Zhanzou.com has been made. The representative said “Facebook has no plans to acquire any company in China.” $85 million is a lot of money for Facebook. I have a feeling that Facebook will create the Chinese version of their site prior to acquiring a competitor. As the Times article accurately reported, Facebook has a large base of english speaking Chinese users. That user base is rapidly expanding.
Facebook has already stated their intention to convert their site into other languages. Based on all of the hype surrounding Facebook in China, perhaps that will be one of their first languages. I would suggest that Facebook convert their site into Turkish first though since Turkey has one of the fastest growing populations on Facebook. Whichever language Facebook translates into first, Facebook will not be entering the Chinese market through acquisition … at least for now.
November 19th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Wait did you just get good information from a PR pesron… so we are not a complete waste?
November 19th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
I am assuming that the Chinese version of Facebook will be a separate site. Otherwise how would an English speaking member add groups or friends if you can’t read Chinese. It will also be interesting to see how Facebook Ads work in the Chinese version.
November 19th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
I am trying to get a sense of the huge Internet market here in Beijing. However, it seemed to me that not many people are on the so-called social networking sites… A lot of people have never heard of web 2.0 or social networking or Facebook. Nonetheless, it seemed that they are on the social websites (forums, bbs etc).
November 19th, 2007 at 9:41 pm
Moreover, in the lasted Web 2.0 conference by OrangeLab, 51.com was invited to talk about “the typical Chinese Web 2.0 user”. “5″ in Chinse sounds like “I” and “1″ sounds like “want”. So “51″ means ” I want”. Maybe that is a social networking site.
November 19th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
[…] According to Nick O’ Neill on AllFacebook.com the acquisition rumors of Zhanzou.com are false. A Facebook PR executive is believed to have told Nick, “Facebook has no plans to […]
November 20th, 2007 at 5:13 am
The French userbase is growing rapidly. I expect that a french version will be one of the first.
November 20th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
[…] I reported yesterday, rumors of acquisition offers by Facebook for Zhanzou.com were unfounded. Interfax China, a Chinese […]