Friendster Beats Facebook to the Punch

There have been rumors that Facebook is preparing to release a Chinese version of their site. Much of this was based on the purchase of the Facebook.cn domain. While that doesn’t really mean much, Facebook has clearly stated their intention to support multiple languages on the site. Given the rapid international growth of the site, it is no wonder that they would like to conver the site into other languages as soon as possible.

According to the Social Networking Weblog, Friendster has just released both traditional Chinese and simiplified Chinese versions of their site. Given the massive growth of the online population in China (and that they have the largest population of countries in the world), this is a great move by Friendster. Look for all of the competing social networks to create a Chinese version in the near future.

It will be interesting to see how the Chinese social networking space will evolve over the coming months. Xiaonei.com had created a Facebook clone and was eventually acquired by Oak Pacific Interactive, a Chinese Internet consortium.  I am curious to see how well Friendster, Facebook, MySpace and other social networks will be able to compete.

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.