Updates to this story
Facing a brick wall with his site being blocked in China, it seems as though Mark Zuckerberg is looking at other ways to crack the country.
According to reports in the Chinese press, the Facebook founder has met with the head honchos of China's biggest search engine Baidu.
Zuckerberg and Baidu chief executive Robin Li cosied up and toured the company's offices in Beijing before having a [candle lit?] lunch together in one of the firm's "private dining halls", Baidu spokesman Kaiser Kuo told AFP.
"It makes sense -- he is interested in the Chinese Internet, he's made that very plain. Obviously this is one of the big dark spots for Facebook because it is blocked here in China," Kuo said.
"He has had a long-standing interest in China. I'm sure he wants to get the advice of someone who knows the internet landscape well here."
Techeye, has known for a while that Zuckerberg was planning a Chinese holiday thanks to our Taiwanese correspondent who earlier this month hinted that the Facebook founder was taking a month long trip to the country - presumably to practice his newly learnt Mandarin, and to visit his girlfriend's family.
Of course Zuckerberg claims that his newly learnt language is all to do with the culture claiming that: "I'm trying to understand the language, the culture, the mindset -- it's just such an important part of the world.
"How can you connect the whole world if you leave out a billion-six?" he was reported as saying.
However, we're more convinced that it's all a ploy to sweet talk the government into making Facebook accessible or just in a bid to form partnerships with other big sites.
Beijing has set up a huge online censorship system sometimes dubbed the "Great Firewall of China" that aggressively blocks sites on topics considered sensitive.
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg met with some of China's top tech executives on a visit to Beijing this week.
.Mr. Zuckerberg on Wednesday visited the offices of Sina Corp., a leading Chinese Web portal, and met with its CEO, Charles Chao. That followed a meeting Tuesday with Wang Jianzhou, chairman of state-owned telecommunications carrier China Mobile Ltd., and a visit Monday with Robin Li, CEO of Baidu Inc., at the Chinese search company's headquarters.
The trip appeared to be an effort by the 26-year-old to learn more about the Chinese market, rather than discuss any specific business proposals. But it came as the Facebook founder openly has discussed a desire to get into China, where the government has blocked access to the site since last year.
At a talk this fall to aspiring entrepreneurs in Palo Alto, Calif., Mr. Zuckerberg said he is hoping to figure out the "right partnerships that we would need to do in China to succeed on our terms."
"Before we do anything there, I'm personally spending a lot of time studying it and figuring out what I think the right thing to do is," he said, adding that he spends an hour a day studying Chinese. "It's such an important part of the world. I mean, how can you connect the world if you leave out" China's population of more than one billion people, he said.
Mr. Zuckerberg couldn't be reached for comment. A Facebook spokeswoman said he is in China on vacation.
China had 420 million Internet users as of June, more than any other nation. Research firm Analysys International estimates that Chinese social-networking sites had 176 million users last year, up 68% from the year before.
Liu Qi, vice general manager of Sina's marketing department, said Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Chao met to discuss China's market and to learn about its Twitter-like microblogging product, Sina Weibo. "As far as I know, the main purpose of Mr. Zuckerberg's trip is to understand the Chinese Internet market, and to communicate with China's large Internet companies," Mr. Liu said.
A China Mobile executive, without elaborating, said Mr. Zuckerberg met with Mr. Wang. Baidu declined to give details on the meeting with Mr. Li.
Facebook is available in 70 languages, including complex Chinese in TAWIAN, and 70% of its more than 500 million active users are outside the U.S. It started a Chinese-language version in 2008, but gained little traction in China, partly because of Chinese competition and partly because government Web-filtering technology made access to parts of the site spotty even before it was blocked entirely.
After Facebook was blocked—authorities never explained why—its user numbers in China plunged. By late 2009, it had 14,000 active users in the country, down from a million just a few months earlier, according to Inside Facebook, a research firm that focuses on Facebook.
Charles Chao, president and CEO of Sina.com
.Today most users in China who try to access Facebook—and other blocked sites such as YouTube—receive error messages that suggest a technical glitch, such as the standard "Error 404: File not found." A small but growing number of Chinese use tools such as virtual private networks to evade the government's restrictions.
Facebook executives have visited China before to meet with Chinese executives, but the company has never opened an office in China.
If the company decided to enter the Chinese market, Facebook would face a host of challenges—even assuming it could restore open access to its site. It would be required to enter a partnership with a domestic company and to filter out politically sensitive information and other prohibited content. Mr. Zuckerberg has said Facebook is willing to make exceptions to its policy of openness in certain markets, such as in Germany, where Nazi content is prohibited.
Meanwhile, competitors have proved adept at tweaking global products for Chinese users. Facebook rival MySpace has a stake in a Chinese version of the website called MySpace China. But MySpace, a unit of News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal, lags behind Oak Pacific Interactive's Renren.com, Kaixin001 and other Chinese rivals by user numbers.
Mr. Zuckerberg's visit has been a hot topic among Internet enthusiasts, and photos of his meetings with local executives have been circulated on the Web. The Facebook founder isn't nearly as famous to most Chinese as he is in the U.S. and elsewhere. But his popularity has grown, especially after he was named Time Magazine's Person of the Year last week and after the release of "The Social Network," a film about him that is widely available on pirated DVDs in China but wasn't released in theaters here.
Some users poked fun at the spectacle of Mr. Zuckerberg being welcomed in a country that bans his website. "The relevant authorities have already made a welcoming banner reading: Warm welcome to China the founder of the website '404 Not found,' Mr. 'Part of your search results cannot be displayed,' " one Sina Weibo user wrote.
Some users poked fun at the spectacle of Mr. Zuckerberg being welcomed in a country that bans his website. "The relevant authorities have already made a welcoming banner reading:
Warm welcome to China the founder of the website '404 Not found,'
Mr. 'Part of your search results cannot be displayed,' "
Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703814804576035143409583806.html#ixzz195WJp7JE