source: http://adage.com/article/global-news/facebook-find-ventures-china/228068/ *note: Please click on the link to visit the picture in its orginal site and actually click on the logos. The site will tell you the Chinese version of that service. You’ll be surprised at what they have behind that thousand kilometer long government controlled cyberwall!
I was reading over Tony Liu’s post regarding how Tencent pursues a strategy of being a “copycat” since it develops numerous social media tools that is abnormally similar to services offered by other sites such as Twitter, WordPress, or MSN. As a result, Tony criticised this behaviour as “not ethically right”, which is an opinion that I support 200%. However, let’s remember that numerous social media services such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are banned in China. So, if you think about it, the only way that Chinese people can access any form of social media is by using the “pirated” services of state approved corporations like Tencent. As a result, I believe this issue of the company being a “copycat” is a very interesting ethical dilemma since if we stop the firm from stealing the ideas of other companies; we would have complied with the ideas of business ethics, but at the same time, we would have deprived everyone in China access to very important communication service that is becoming more and more fundamental to life, which is not very ethical. Hence, this issue has become another example of how the interests of the firm collide directly with the interests of society, which is one of the greatest struggles of the modern businessperson.
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