China Not Too Bubbly

We all know that China is tough on censorship. So much so that it blocked out Sina and Tencent Weibo comments over the weekend over concerns about false rumors. Such censorship barriers made it hard for companies to expand to China.

Tom Clayton, the CEO and founder of the Bubble Motion (who will be speaking at Startup Asia Jakarta), recently spoke with me a little on the topic of China. His company isn’t censored or blocked, but censorship makes it tough to do business there, especially when you have a social networking platform that could potentially make information viral. Bubbly is like Twitter but information is sent in voice form. You can send messages in text too, but the service (which has over 15 million users) stands out by communicating via voice messages among feature phone users.

Bubbly users span across the most populous countries in Asia, including India, Indonesia, and Japan. But China remains an unconquered territory. Tom gave China serious consideration but finds it would be extremely tough. To make Bubbly work on feature phones, it requires a shortcode for users to dial to retrieve/send voice messages. And that required Bubble Motion to work with local mobile carriers and also the provinces in order to make Bubbly work. The paperwork and time required before they get approved are daunting.

To be honest, Bubbly does look like a great platform if one were to try and organize a national revolution. Voice messages are clear and yet hard for the government to track. So it is unlikely that the Chinese government will approve Bubbly to operate in China if it ever applies. There isn’t any real solution to China’s censorship. Just like Facebook and Twitter, they have to go with the flow and look to other markets. Bubbly is very much focused on India and Indonesia where there are still many users out there waiting for new services.