Facebook and Xiaonei (Renren.com)

As everyone knows, Facebook together with another bunch of foreign websites are blocked in China. Someone interprets this censorship as follows: because these foreign websites refuse to collaborate with the censorship system of the Chinese internet security, therefore it's better to block them all. However, many mainland Chinese netizens use proxy software to obtain a foreign IP and they still can connect to these websites. Chinese diplomats, interviewed by foreign media and overseas Chinese students, said: well I don't understand why Chinese must use Facebook. Because in China we also have similar social networking websites and the most famous on among the many is Xiaonei.com (later renamed Renren.com).

So is Xiaonei.com the same thing as Facebook? I don't want to talk about it in a diplomatic, political or human rights way. Last time we had dinner together with a group of Chinese students in London Chinatown and we talked about the culture difference between Facebook and Xiaonei.

On Facebook, people post about their lives: what they did, where they went, what they liked and disliked. Generally it is an expression and display of oneself. The "I" is the center on the stage. People facebook to let their friends know what's going on with themselves and hope to generate comments.

On Xiaonei.com, the users would rather "share" resources posted by others (notes, album, etc.) and the main purpose is to learn new things and collect new information. The most popular type of posts which got shared the most are the notes and album to teach new knowledge, new skills, or even basic living skills. I got a feeling that most of the time, Xiaonei users get online to learn, instead of showing oneself.

I guess this might be one cultural difference between America and China (if I can conveniently use Facebook and Xiaonei as examples).