Internet users in China can now join Facebook, the popular American social networking site, as of Friday last week. Facebook has been preparing to enter the Chinese market for some time now and seems set to tackle local competition in a bid to capture a share of China’s enormous online community. Local counterparts include Xiaonei.com, Zhansou.com and 360Quan.com, a teen social network site owned by Koolanoo Group. Myspace, which has been operating in China since 2007, is also likely to put up a fight to continue building up its new local following.

The new Facebook website appears in a simplified version of Chinese, which is used on Mainland China. Facebook also launched two other new sites, one in Russian and one in traditional Chinese. However, Facebook is not alone in joining in the fight to capture a share of the largest online community in the world; Tencent, the Chinese instant messaging company, has also entered the arena. There is some speculation as to whether Facebook will succeed in competing against the, already well-established social networking sites in China.