Viadeo's online business community expands to China

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European professionals have a new way to develop business contacts in Chinese markets without leaving their desks, as France-based social networking platform Viadeo has crossed the continents to pick up a "significant stake" of Chinese networking site Tianji.

Facebook for the business world, the two platforms allow their users - Viadeo has a million members across Europe, while Tianji has 700,000 in China - to make connections with potential suppliers, employees and clients by searching members details and seeing who their own trusted contacts are working with.

"China's a huge market, so how can Western companies profit from that growth and how do Chinese companies expand their markets west?" said Peter Cunningham, UK country manager at Viadeo, which launched last month in the UK. "China is a different business market. A western business model translated won't work."

Cultural differences are a bigger barrier than language, Cunningham said. Because of this, Viadeo preferred to buy an undisclosed but "significant" stake in Tianji, complete with a spot on the board, rather than translate their own service for Chinese users.

Language is, of course, an issue but Cunningham said some 80 per cent of Tianji's membership can manage in English - good thing, as it's unlikely many of the British, French and German business professionals on Viadeo have yet mastered Cantonese or Mandarin.

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