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I'm definitely not an authority on new media or tech but I have a personal interest obsession with following developments in the sector to stay up to date with what's around the corner and whether it's applicable to my business model or not.

So I woke up this morning to find everyone buzzing and debating on Twitter about Robert Scoble and how his account was deleted by Facebook in what has turned out to be a pretty big deal. I'm in no position to try and regurgitate the details but you can read Scoble's blog about it and Techmeme's got all the juicy details of what went down so far between Scoble, Facebook and Plaxo.

It didn't take long for David Feng (President of the Beijing Macintosh Union, former editor at blognation China, and founder of Beijingology) to chime in with a Chinese viewpoint that I found really interesting! As David says:

A Chinese Scoble might have initiated a PR war. He might have his guanxi or contacts breathe heavy down upon Facebook. He may already have solid contacts at Facebook, so that Facebook won’t have the guts to dezui (put more blunty, to “P-off”) Scoble. He might get downright “niu”, or strong and powerful (sometimes with a negative connotation).

I'll go off on a slightly related tangent and say that if this had all gone down in a China context:

• The folks at Plaxo wouldn't have even asked their most trusted blogger friends to try out a controversial new app behind Facebook's back. Especially if they knew it had the potential of resulting in account deletion by Facebook as mentioned by Michael Arrington in his TechCrunch blog about it.
• Scoble would have been too worried about permanently damaging what little guanxi he did have with Facebook and would have declined to move forward with risking his reputation and his Facebook account (and all the 5,000+ friends he built up on there) by being Plaxo's guinea pig for their new app.
• Even if Plaxo and Scoble still went forward with testing this unauthorized app out on Facebook, if this had gone down in China...Facebook would NEVER had immediately deleted Scoble's account BECAUSE they know that Scoble is an influencer in the very industry they are all in together. If there's one thing I'm learning from following developments of the tech sector, it's a very big industry but very small world in much the same way China business circles are. The reality is, in China who you are DOES factor into every action that is taken against you. Just look at the crazy viral controversy it's ignited so far. Again, if this was China, Facebook's CEO would've actually gotten fired whoever at the lower ranks of his company took it upon themselves to delete the account of such a high profile blogger as Scoble without consulting the PR Director or himself for that matter. Dirty laundry is never aired in public in China. Just as David Feng so correctly mentioned, that's the whole point of the Art of War.
• Lastly, even after getting his account deleted...the Chinese version of Scoble would have apologized to Facebook on the surface and explained to his readers on his blog that he didn't mean to cause such a public disruption over something that was meant to help Plaxo and Facebook work together on giving more power to the people. (So Communist sounding isn't it?) This would win Scoble big time public opinion points as a hero of the common man and save his face and likely result in his account being reinstated by Facebook who also wants to save their face in the eyes of the Chinese public.

LOL...ok, so that's my cultural lesson for today as it would apply in a China business situation. Relax, it's all HYPOTHETICAL people. The reality is, all the players here are American and this issue has nothing to do with China but there's a Chinese business lesson to be learned in these types of situations. The fact is, Facebook is looking to enter the China market soon and hopefully it won't export the American business culture it has into the China market...if so, they could very well find themselves in a situation where they deleted the account of some famous Chinese blogger with a lot of influence...and the WOM chatter against Facebook in China would never let up if that was the case.

Hmm...in that case, maybe Rupert Murdoch was smart in putting his wife Wendy as head of MySpace China after all. A Chinese Plaxo would think twice about making a famous Chinese blogger test out a controversial and unauthorized app on MySpace China because the head of MySpace China is married to a guy with a lot of guanxi in international and Chinese business circles everywhere. I'm just saying, it'll be interesting to see if Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his 23 years of zero China experience translates to a very smart decision on his part in letting his local management team in China call the shots there.

All this hypothetical food for thought is making me hungry to have another listen at some good points Eric Rosenblum made during an interview I did with him on Why American Tech Companies Fail In China. Have a listen here.

Update: Scoble's Facebook account has been reinstated. No doubt an exception based on factoring who he is in the industry as an average no-name joe hacker would stay booted off and wouldn't get to jump the queue as i'm sure there are plenty of people with deleted Facebook accounts who are waiting for their turn to get heard.

Also check out Jeremiah Owyang's blog for Plaxo's side of the story.

I'm not sure if my friend Fons Tuinstra (founder of ChinaBiz Speakers and the brains behind the China Herald blog) realizes it, but I really look forward to his Facebook status updates because some of them do a good job at cracking me up. It's not just what he says, it's also the way he says it that hits at the core of my sarcastic sense of humor.

Here are my top ten "Fonsisms" of the past few weeks:

1. Fons got business cards for 25 rmb per 100, a nice deal although it includes a bad service.
2. Fons is for the first time picking up a parcel from a quaidi at a street corner; everything is possible here.
3. Fons foresees another day of running around like a chicken without head.
4. Fons amazed to hear his friend is calling the Merchant Bank almost at midnight on Saturday evening; and got an answer from a real person.
5. Fons is late sending best wishes for New Year and might wait until the Chinese one.
6. Fons is shocked to learn a female friend spend more money on the hairdresser than on her mobile phone.
7. Fons is still amazed about the ability of the Shanghainese to continue talking while eating.
8. Fons is back from a meeting where people made jokes about the environmental record of Disneyland.
9. Fons is wondering why his income from Adsense is dropping after he added another box.
10. Fons is discovering that the nice thing of writing about social networks is just like the weather and soccer, everybody is an authority.

If you guys don't find any of these hilarious then either you've got a problem with your sense of humor...or you've got a problem with your sense of humor. Keep me laughing over here Fons and may you win every single mahjong game this year and get paid for every speaker request you receive!