• Fast Company, Monday, April 11, 2011 11:37 AM

According to Chinese press reports, Facebook has struck a deal with Baidu to launch a jointly owned social network in China. And, while Facebook isn't the first to team up with China's top search engine, such a deal has vast implications for both parties. "It will allow Mark Zuckerberg to tap the huge Chinese population's online habits and make loads of cash," writes Fast Company regarding the would-be deal. "The booming Chinese Net economy is a potential multi-billion-dollar affair that simply can't be ignored."

"The deal makes sense for both sides," Business Insider writes. "On Facebook's side, it needs a big local partner to break into the huge Chinese market. On Baidu's side, it is threatened by social network juggernaut Tencent. Sources tell the Chinese press that the new venture wouldn't involve Facebook.com, which is blocked inside China like many more social networking sites, but a jointly owned, new social networking site.

"It's unlikely that the new service will be called Facebook, given China's habit of marking things in its own way," Fast Company suggests. "And it's unlikely China will let its users skip over the Great Firewall to connect with foreign Facebookers and risk cultural ‘contamination.'" "Presumably such a joint venture type entity would be fully compliant with Beijing's political outlook, while giving Zuckerberg a degree of cover from the sort of grief US campaigners and politicians gave Google over it's China adventures," The Register reasons.

"We can foresee a number of major challenges the partnership poses for Facebook," writes The Atlantic. "The most immediate being its ability to reproduce a culture of over-sharing and self-expression in a country with firm self-censorship rules ... Is Facebook going to be policing the status updates of tens of millions of users?"

Read the whole story at Fast Company »