Facebook’s CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg is as reckless as they can get when it comes to his management of Beacon: ballsy on Madison Avenue, then apologetic on his blog, then brash again on 60 Minutes.
But when it comes to Facebook’s global strategy, Zuckerberg is quite sedate and demure. To penetrate China, instead of the go-at-it-alone strategy, he enlisted Li Ka-Shing to the tune of a $60M investment (previously it was reported that Facebook was mulling an M&A strategy in China). To penetrate Germany, the largest European web market, he is bringing on the Midas touch-wielding Samwer brothers, who incidentally started a Facebook-inspired German social networking site for students.
I think that is pretty smart. Very smart in fact.
American companies who dominate abroad are actually the exception, not the norm. In most cases, they compete for years at a high financial and opportunity cost, only to walk away somewhat wounded. In a few cases, they are nowhere to be found (Google in South Korea, for example). Generally, they do best when they partner up (Yahoo! in Alibaba, for example). Ultimately, Google is accelerating its push against Facebook so Zuckerberg et al. will have their hands full with competition locally, no need to get caught between a rock and a hard place.
On this strategy, I give major props to Zuckerberg for bringing on foreign expertise - and getting paid for it!
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