[Animats]

China is #1 in the world economically, and exports Baidu [1], WeChat [2], etc. Baidu has had a Silicon Valley presence for years, and Tencent, WeChat's parent, opened one last week.

WeChat could be a real threat to Google and Facebook. It's comprehensive; you can do messaging, banking, shopping, and taxi calling from inside WeChat. It has sub-applications for other services. It's a post-desktop world. Google and Facebook came from desktops and crammed down to phones; WeChat was born mobile.

[1] http://www.baidu.com/ [2] http://www.wechat.com/en/

[pdelbarba]

I think it's possible that the culture barrier during the initial days of social networks might have been the cause here. Cultures/aesthetics/languages are different and so platforms that serve as "one size fits all" (not localizing their layout and options) might not be able to compete with more local options at this scale.

[bgee]

What about Huawei? Huawei was banned from entering US telecom infrastructure market [0].

[0] http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/22/huawei-well-re-enter-us-marke...