by Ofer Shoshan, CEO of One Hour Translation
Mark Zuckerberg’s remarkable display of language facility during his recent Q&A in Mandarin at Tsinghua University in Beijing impressed many people around the planet. But Zuckerberg’s linguistic feat clearly has much more significance than just dazzling us and his in-laws.
First, there’s the obvious. Facebook enjoys 1.23 billion active monthly users as of February, but Facebook has been blocked in China since 2009, one of several prominent social-media sites blacklisted by the Chinese government. Could Zuckerberg still be fantasizing about the day when Chinese authorities bring down their “Great Wall,” allowing Facebook access to its more than 1.3 billion citizens? You don’t need Alibaba to illustrate the economic potential.