The founder of global social networking giant Facebook is so determined to make his company a success in China he’s even learning the language.
Facebook has more than 500 million users worldwide, but has been restricted in China since July last year after ethnic unrest in the Xinjiang region.
In a question-and-answer session at Stanford University, Mark Zuckerberg explained how Facebook is only “not winning or going to win” in four countries: China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.
“We kind of carved off China and said, ‘Okay, this one is extremely complex and has its own dynamics,’” he told the audience at the Y Combinator start-up school on Saturday. “In China I think the values are so different from what we have in the US so, 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.”
“It’s kind of a personal challenge this year — I’m taking an hour a day and I’m learning Chinese,” he said. “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 people?”
On China’s openness, Zuckerberg said Facebook respects local laws and cultural differences, explaining how Nazi content is blocked in Germany because it is illegal there — but not outside Germany.
And when a user created an “everybody draw Mohammed day” group on the Web site, Facebook eventually blocked it — but only in Pakistan, as images of the prophet are against the law. This did not make everybody happy.
“Someone in Pakistan right now is trying to get me sentenced to death,” he said, to ripples of laughter. “No joke, well maybe kind of a joke. I don’t think it’s that funny.”
The site’s users spend a total of about 500 billion minutes on the site per month, the company reported separately on the weekend. However, Zuckerberg doesn’t see the site’s role as promoting the US.
“I don’t want Facebook to be an American company — obviously, we are in America — but I don’t want it to be this company that just spreads American values all across the world,” he said.
Facebook’s origin is now a hit Hollywood movie, The Social Network. Zuckerberg says the film got random details right, such as some of his clothes, but key details were wrong.
The movie claims he set up Facebook after a girl dumped him, but he still has the same pre-Facebook girlfriend, he said.
He concluded the filmmakers “can’t wrap their head around the idea that someone might build something because they like building things.”
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