Not losing Facebook in China
XIAONEI.COM does not just look like Facebook, the booming social-networking website. As well as borrowing its design, it has also lifted its strategy and transplanted it to China. It is not alone. All the big “Web 2.0” sites—those that let people share information, collaborate and link up with friends—have many Chinese knockoffs. YouTube, the video-sharing site that is now part of Google, has over 200 copycats in China, about 10% of them backed by venture capital, says Isaac Mao, an internet investor and a Chinese blogging pioneer.
And no wonder, since most Web 2.0 sites do not have official Chinese versions. So enterprising start-ups simply copy the ideas and graphics, and localise them to suit Chinese tastes. The Chinese market is now so saturated that it is much harder to raise money than it was a year ago, says Gary Wang, the boss of Tudou—a site known as the “Chinese YouTube”. This is a good thing, he says, because it means investors are being much more discriminating.
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