Facebook Covertly Launches Mobile App in China
August 11 2017 - 10:56PM
Dow Jones News
By Deepa Seetharaman
Facebook Inc. covertly launched a mobile app in China, in a
shift from the social network's public campaign to woo Beijing
officials who have blocked the social network.
In May, Facebook made its debut a photo-sharing app called
Colorful Balloons in China under the name of a different company,
according to a person familiar with the matter. The app was
developed by Young LLC but doesn't advertise its affiliation with
Facebook.
"We have long said that we are interested in China, and are
spending time understanding and learning more about the country in
different ways, " a Facebook spokeswoman said.
The New York Times first reported the app's connection to
Facebook, whose services have been blocked on China's internet
since 2009.
Facebook executives spent years publicly courted Chinese
officials, hiring a well-connected China-policy expert and making
Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg more visible.
He gave a 22-minute speech in Mandarin in 2015 and jogged
through Tiananmen Square on a smoggy day in 2016. He also scored a
high-profile board seat at Tsinghua University, one of China's top
universities, to build inroads with government officials.
At one point, Mr. Zuckerberg directed Facebook engineers to work
on a tool that would allow third-parties -- including governments
like China -- to block content before it could be posted on
Facebook, people familiar with the effort have said. Development of
the tool sparked a debate among employees last summer, the people
said.
More recently, Facebook's public outreach to Beijing has cooled
off. Colorful Balloons suggests the social-media giant is
undertaking a more subtle approach.
While the Facebook app can't be used in China, some of its other
apps are available, including Layout and Boomerang, creative-tool
apps built by Instagram, the photo-sharing app owned by Facebook.
These apps don't need to communicate with a server to be used and
haven't been blocked.
Write to Deepa Seetharaman at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 11, 2017 22:41 ET (02:41 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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