Facebook is looking east for its next phase of expansion, as the US company prepares to take on entrenched competition in China, Russia and Japan to become the first social network company to connect 1bn people.
After relying largely on organic growth to reach almost 500m members, Facebook must now make its first strategic local moves. The facebook founder has thus far not specified as to whether this would involve local customisation of Facebook in these countries, or acquisitions.
Facebook faces large, established competitors in Asian markets, including Japan’s Mixi, Tencent QQ in China, and Vkondakte in Russia.
The facebook founder, at an audience of marketers in Cannes. said that mobile internet would be a big driver of global growth in social media. Some countries now have more mobile usage than web usage; citing India as an example. He also said that the company was “pretty close” to releasing a new mobile service, which would add location data to the platform.