A lot of talk recently has been about Facebook trying to have there website translated into Chinese so that they can go full force and attack the Chinese market. Facebook has been looking to emerge in the Chinese market for sometime now but what was stopping them was the fact most people couldn’t read the English website. Recently Facebook has left a nice little message on the homepage of China Facebook users asking for help in translating the text. Lots are calling this the true power of Web 2.0 marketing and if the site is successfully changed into basic Chinese language then the market would open up for Facebook to enter China. China isn’t in the dark when it comes to social networks and they already have many successful networks online but none of them match up to the volume of Facebook. If the translation is a success they will need to find staff and a marketing team to aim at the Chinese market though as it’s been proven before that it isn’t an easy task trying to go after a share of the Western market. With the right team I think they could succeed though and make a presence in China. There are already around a quarter of a million Chinese users of Facebook and some using the Chinese language on there profiles making the switch seem a more clear decision then speculators are making it out to be. A Hong Kong investor has also raised his stake in Facebook which means people in the Western market can already sense the Facebook train coming through at any time now.

Social markets in China are pretty huge currently with the biggest being QQ with roughly 300 million users. For Facebook to stand a chance at cracking this market they will need to offer something nice for the users in China as well as use the technology they have for Facebook apps but in the Chinese language. I understand from a business point of view how this will help Facebook but how does it help anyone from the US or Canada is my question. With the language switching to Chinese I don’t see anything but a smaller market for the current Facebook developers because many people will aim to switch the language of Facebook I feel which would cause all the apps being done in different languages. If this happened the current developers and advertisers would be losing market share and this could possibly hurt Facebook in the end although there is no reasonable reason why it would at this time. Facebook will succeed in China within the next three years I think and many will make money off of it somehow and it will be a great chance for many people to try earning some money.