Rumor on Facebook’s China Acquisition Again

Written by Tangos on December 4, 2007
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Facebook and China is the hottest topic in web 2.0 sector since November. At first, There were so many rumors that Facebook would enter China market by acquisition, and it has offered $85 million to acquire Zhanzuo.com. Besides Zhanzuo, other rumored acquisition targets are Fenbei.com and Tianwang(Kaiser said the rumor on Tianwang has some foundation). Then it is said Li Ka-Shing, a Hong Kong tycoon, will invest $60 million in Facebook, which undoubtedly arises the speculation on possible partnership between Facebook and Tom.com, an Internet assets of Li Ka-Shing.

Though Facebook’s Director of Communications has denied the acquisition rumor on Techcrunch, and said “No offer has been made and no acquisition in China is being considered by Facebook”, here comes the acquisition rumor again.

FenbeiShuimuzhouping, VP of Fenbei.com, said on his column in iResearch.cn that Gideon Yu, CFO of Facebook, visited Fenbei’s office in Beijing today, and propose an offer of 15.39 million to fully acquire Fenbei.com.

Well, who is Fenbei.com? Fenbei, formerly known as 163888.net, is a Chongqing-based music-centered social networking site. 163888.net was established in 2003. It allowed users to upload and share their karaoke songs and original songs, which made it successfully build an online singer and net songs community. IDGVC and Alcatel invested $2 million and $6 million in 2004 and 2006 respectively. According to Fenbei.com’s website, it has about 8 million active users by June 2007.

Fenbei is not a social networking site for colleague students, the culture of Fenbei does not encourage users to use their real name. In fact, most of them are using their net nickname, while Facebook encourage online social networking with your real identity in offline life. Is there any synergy between Facebook and Fenbei, why Facebook will be interested in acquire Fenbei? Maybe this question can only be answered by Facebook when the rumor comes true.

7 Responses to “Rumor on Facebook’s China Acquisition Again”

  1. Web 2.0 - Social Media - Internet News - Blogging » Rumor on Facebook’s China Acquisition Again on December 4th, 2007 11:00 pm

    [...] Kristen Nicole wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptFacebook and China is the hottest topic in web 2.0 sector since November. At first, There were so many rumors that Facebook would enter China market by acquisition, and it has offered $85 million to acquire Zhanzuo.com. … [...]

  2. Rumor on Facebook’s China Acquisition Again on December 5th, 2007 7:40 am

    [...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]

  3. David on December 5th, 2007 8:15 am

    What type of company has a VP who blogs about the deal terms on the day an offer is made?? If this were true and I was Facebook then I would walk away immediately. Sounds like yet another company trying to pump up its valuation by spreading rumours.

  4. Daniel Wu on December 5th, 2007 4:33 pm

    Nice to see your blog, Tangos.
    I will join NetDragon as its public relations director soon.
    Let’s keep in touch and welcome to FZ.

  5. Daisy Ai on December 6th, 2007 5:27 pm

    It is quite easy to acquier Chinese Website. But how to maintain it’s popularity and then develop it, and most important, in which way to get profit from it, maybe is the most important theme for investor to reserach. Web 2.0 is hot, but how to make it into cash cow, is still a long way for all of us.

  6. Tom on December 10th, 2007 5:27 pm

    It looks very nice.
    Chinese are very brightness. I found a chinese digg site(www.waakee.com), it is great.

  7. VentureBeat » Can Facebook stand tall against Big Brother?” on December 13th, 2007 4:33 am

    [...] Meanwhile, rumors have been pouring out of the Chinese media over the last month that Facebook is trying to directly acquire or invest in Chinese social networks (VentureBeat’s previous coverage here and here). Facebook has denied earlier rumors, but this week another one trickled out — that Facebook chief financial officer Gideon Yu visited China on December 4, and offered slightly more than $2 million to purchase Fenbei.com, a Chinese music-centered social network. [...]

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