In Putonghua, the phonetic equivalent of Facebook translates as 'doomed to die'. But that's not how senior executives from the company see their future in Asia following the launch of a Hong Kong office last week.
Facebook's Quarry Bay office staffed by Jayne Leung and Nicole Chou will look after sales in Hong Kong and Taiwan. It already has offices in Singapore and India. Globally, it has close to 600 million users, with 70 per cent from outside the United States.
Hong Kong is viewed by many as a gateway for businesses into the mainland and Facebook's presence here is the strongest sign of a move on the mainland, where the online penetration rate is still less than a third, with 420 million internet users.
'Asia is not only big but it's also grown significantly, so in Hong Kong we have around four million active users,' Trevor Johnson, head of strategy and planning for emerging markets, said at a social media conference in Hong Kong last week.
'Across the region, we have possibly 250, 260 million active users. Indonesia is like No 2 with 35, 36 million users.'
An active user is defined as someone who has logged into their account in the past 30 days.
