According to the New York Times, Facebook has managed to sneak into china and has started a photo sharing application named Colorful Balloons in the country. Facebook has been officially blocked in the country and even some of the Whatsapp service was unavailable in China. The Colorful Balloons feature that is available in Chinese online stores looks remarkably similar to the Moments photo sharing device of Facebook.
Photo sharing application of Facebook
The feature provides an ad platform for homegrown businesses in China to expand into the foreign arena and create a Chinese followership community on the internet similar to Facebook..
China is known for some strict censorship and the banning of Facebook in the country comes in line with the unavailability of Google and other Western enterprises in the country. Besides the photo sharing application, Facebook has also opened a censorship tool in the country that provides and suppresses posts in certain geographic areas. Facebook has been banned in the country of China for years and the new device of the company is meant to give an inroad to the company in the country. The Colorful Balloons application groups photos and videos of the users and can also create photo and video albums that users can share with friends and family. Even though Colorful Balloons is touted as a Facebook utility, the name of the company is nowhere to be seen in the products that are avaialble in Chinese stores.
Chinese homegrown enterprise with Facebook twist
The Colourful Balloons utility is reportedly said to belong to a company called Youge LLC but the feature is getting popular in the country as a Facebook application. The new application has features that cater to the Chinese market and in order to sign up for the product, users need to provide a Chinese cell phone number.
Facebook and other Western tech companies have been banned in China by the government which is also referred to as the Great Firewall of the country similar to the Great Wall of China nomenclature. Other than Facebook, other websites banned in the country include Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest and Instagram and in their place local Chinese businesses have developed similar utilities like the Weibo application of China that is popular as a microblogging site similar to Twitter. The new feature is aimed at wanting a pie of the Chinese market by eager American entrepreneurs.
