With the biggest and fastest-growing online population on the planet, China is the holy grail for social networking sites. No surprise, then, that U.S.giants such as MySpace and Facebook are eager to reel in some of China’s 250 million Netizens.

But so far, American companies haven’t quite figured out how to navigate China’s perilous regulatory environment, in which any piece of content on social networks can be scrutinized by the Chinese government.

Unlike Facebook or MySpace, Chinese social network sites are held responsible for all content posted or shared through their massive online communities, observers say. This has forced them to develop and invest in elaborate censorship technologies that block politically sensitive material from being shared, and also delete information already on the sites. If a social network doesn’t comply with regulations, authorities reserve the right to shut it down, according to Steven Dickinson, a China-based Internet lawyer for HarrisMoure.

Of course, social networks operate just the opposite way in the U.S., where users are allowed to freely share all kinds of data without the threat of government intervention. For these reasons, American social networks will find it extremely difficult to make inroads in China.

“I don’t think any foreign Internet company can effectively compete against Chinese companies in the Chinese market,” says Rebecca MacKinnon, a media studies professor at the University of Hong Kong. “The regulatory environment is so difficult that it’s almost impossible for foreigners to have an advantage over locals who have better political connections and who can manipulate the regulatory system much more effectively.”

Most U.S. social networks have some filtering technologies that catch pornographic, profane and copyrighted content, says Ben Edelman, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School who has researched Internet filtering in China. But using the technologies to identify and remove politically sensitive material is more challenging because the Chinese government’s list of sensitive keywords and content constantly changes, depending on the political climate.

Moreover, sites in China are expected to keep on top of increasingly sophisticated technologies that users download to circumvent filters. One tool, for instance, converts text into its mirror image.

But filtering technologies can’t do it all. Chinese social networks also have teams of employees who manually monitor content, according to Hong Kong-based CLSA analyst Elinor Leung.

A spokesperson for Tencent, which owns the popular QQ Web services, said the company does not disclose the size of its censorship team. More than 100 million people use QQ’s services, which include blogs, instant messenger and photo-sharing.

Facing a tricky balance between complying with China’s censorship laws and keeping their sites open, some U.S. firms have thus far taken approaches that remove regulatory requirements from their hands. Eager to provide uninterrupted, higher-speed access to Chinese users, MySpace decided to host MySpace China on servers in China. In April 2007, the social network licensed its brand to a Chinese start-up that censors content.

In June, Facebook set up a Chinese-language version of its site on offshore servers. This way, Facebook isn’t obligated to censor content. Instead, Chinese routers can block the site. Indeed, while China-based users can log onto Facebook, access is not always guaranteed, and the site can be slow due to Chinese routers filtering online content flowing into the country, users say. Facebook declined to comment further on its China strategy and MySpace did not return a request for comment.

Even though Facebook and MySpace are mum, U.S. social networks likely will continue to try to crack the Chinese market because of the enormous growth potential. In the first six months of 2008, the Chinese online population grew by 56% compared with last year’s corresponding period, according to the government-affiliated China Internet Network Information Center.

And with China’s booming economy, there’s money to be made. Tencent, for instance, saw its second-quarter profits soar 92.5% compared to the same period a year ago.

To grab Chinese market share, some U.S. firms are taking stakes in Chinese companies rather than trying to navigate the system by themselves. Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ), for instance, has joined up with China’s Tianya to launch online community site Tianya Laiba, and Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) has invested in China’s popular social networking site 51.com.

But if the experiences of other Internet firms are any indication, these initiatives face tough odds. Despite splurging on local acquisitions, Amazon.com (nasdaq: AMZN - news - people ), eBay (nasdaq: EBAY - news - people ) and Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) have all lost market share to local competitors Baidu (nasdaq: BIDU - news - people ), Alibaba and others.

Facing a tough regulatory maze in China, American social network sites will need to consider how far they are willing to go to nab Chinese customers.

Demetra Markopoulos, real life Cars Diva behind CarsDiva.com, has announced FlexFans.org. The social network has been created specifically for consumer enthusiasts, retailers, and manufacturers of the new Flex Crossover vehicle, recently introduced by Ford Motor Company. Demetra got the idea to develop a social network focused on a single product line after visiting Ford’s corporate headquarters in Dearborn. She met with key designers and product and marcom managers of the Flex and returned with video interviews from her round table discussion and product walk around.

“I’m convinced this new crossover vehicle’s styling, creature comforts and luxury will transform the market,” says the CarsDiva. “Early consumers, designers and retailers I’ve spoken with share my view so I thought a bold, groundbreaking vehicle should have an equally bold and groundbreaking network on the Web where Flex Fans can congregate, talk about the Flex and discuss new innovations. For this reason I created FlexFans.org as the virtual Flex community and meeting place.”

Steve Amabile, General Sales Manager at Springfield Ford in Philadelphia and early online enthusiast and participant in web-based Flex forums agrees, “While I’ve been participating as a resource in other online forums and sites focused on the Flex, Demetra has introduced the first true social network for Flex enthusiasts, complete with photos, video profiles, blogs, public and private groups and ‘Ask the Expert’ wikis. It’s the best social network available to those of us with something to express about the Flex, or those who want to watch and learn more.”

Amabile added, “We were so excited about CarsDiva’s new Flex site, we invited the CarsDiva to our Flex introduction party in Philadelphia and she agreed to attend.”

To further promote FlexFans.org Markopoulos has attended Flex launch consumer events at Ford dealerships in the Philadelphia area this week including Springfield Ford Wednesday night, August 20th. She will attend McCafferty Ford’s special Flex Consumer event Friday night, August 22, 2008.

“I love a party, I love the new Flex and car folks are my favorite people. I was thrilled to accept when several dealers invited me to attend consumer event launch parties for the Flex,” said Markopoulos.

Chris Bove, General Sales Manager of McCafferty Ford in Langhorne, PA, agrees, “We’re enthusiastic to introduce the Flex and wanted to throw a fantastic party around the vehicle launch Friday, I’m certain CarsDiva’s presence will enhance the occasion.”

Watch Video: www.carsdiva.com

About CARS, Inc.

CARS, Inc. is an independent technology and services company, founded and managed by automobile industry and technology veterans. The company is at the forefront of delivering online network mass collaboration revolution benefits to all sectors of the car realm as well as focused consumer segments that interact with automotive design, manufacturing, sales and service professionals.

CARS, Inc. is the first company to specialize in creating and maintaining specialized social and professional networks and online communities that speak to multiple major sectors of the automotive industry. CARS, Inc. social/professional networks go beyond research, media, or retail related Web sites, to give industry professionals and consumers a way to translate the concept of online mass collaboration into usable tools and techniques.

CARS, Inc. is dedicated to bringing the most advanced online relationship building platforms to automotive industry professionals, through specific market segment focus, ultimately dominating as the number one online automotive community networking company in the world.

Social networking sites like Facebook, Zooped, MySpace and Friendster are all seeing significant growth in their subscriber base — just not in the United States. According to a report conducted by comScore, a company that measures online digital growth, world-wide growth of social networks has grown by 25 percent, compared to just nine percent in the United States.

The region driving the most growth in adapting social networks like Facebook and MySpace is classified as The Middle East-Africa region. In June 2007, comScore recorded 18,226,000 unique visitors in that region. In June 2008 that number jumped to 30,197,000 unique visitors, a jump of 66 percent from the previous year.

While North American social network users may have been early Friendster, MySpace and Facebook adopters, the domestic numbers have leveled off. Compared to the Middle East-Africa region, North American network growth was recorded at nine percent.

“While the social networking trend first took off in North America, it is beginning to reach a point of maturity in the region,” said Jack Flanagan, comScore executive vice president. “However, the phenomenon is still growing rapidly in other regions around the world — especially as the established American brands turn their focus to developing markets.”

The other markets that are being developed, besides the Middle East-Africa region, are Latin America, Europe and Asia Pacific, all of which have grown more than 20 percent since July of 2007. Europe leads the charge with the highest number of new adopters. In 2007, there were approximately 122.5 million users. In 2008 that number jumped 35 percent to 165.2 million. Latin American social networking users grew 33 percent from 40 million to 53.2 million users. The Asia Pacific region grew from 162.7 million users to 200.5 million users over the course of the past year.

The Asia Pacific market is a good example of how some social networks will catch fire in some regions while not in others.

Before MySpace and Facebook began to dominate online social networking, Friendster was the toast of the town. But before long, MySpace caught up and overtook it with users. The same thing happened to MySpace — which is by no means dead in the water — when Facebook became the big dog. In the United States Friendster became a second or third thought. But in the Asia Pacific market, Friendster is alive and well. In fact, the social networking company recently hired Richard Kimber, former Google regional managing director of South Asia, to be the new CEO and a member of the board of directors. Along with that announcement came a cool $20 million in venture capital to expand Friendster’s footprint in the region. From 2007 to 2008, comScore reports that Friendster grew from 24.6 million to 37 million users.

“Friendster is growing at an enormous rate in Asia Pacific and is clearly leading the competition,” said Kimber in a statement.

Facebook is no slouch either. The social network grew 38 percent in North America over the course of the past year. That’s a relatively modest growth rate when considering that Facebook growth in Europe alone grew 303 percent from 2007 to 2008. The Asia Pacific market grew 458 percent from 3.7 million users to 20.7 million in 2008. The Middle East-Africa region grew 403 percent from 2.9 million to 14.9 million users. Meanwhile, Latin America saw the largest percentage growth year over year going from 1 million users to 11.9 million users for a growth rate of a staggering 1055 percent.

Social network users are much heavier consumers of digital content including SMS, mobile email, photos, music, games and mobile TV than mobile phone service subscribers.

The revelation comes from recent research published by industry analyst ABI Research which canvassed 1,000 mobile subscribers and just over 500 social network mobile subscribers in the US.

Three quarters of the latter group were aged between 18 and 30, and were twice as likely to own a smartphone as their non-networked equivalents.

“The fact that online social networkers consume more mobile content and media than mobile subscribers who are not into online networking may not be really surprising,” said principal analyst Nick Holland.

“However, what we have long suspected is confirmed by the numbers: for most kinds of mobile content, online social networkers consume about twice as much as their non-networked peers.”

The driving force behind online social networkers’ consumption of mobile media is that they are on average younger and more tech-savvy.

Also, many social networks are organised around a specific media-related interest such as photography or music.

“Advertising on social networks is not working particularly well, so promotion of mobile content on online social network sites should be a high priority for mobile operators, content distributors, media companies and advertisers,” said Holland.

When Jason Harrison joined global communications firm Universal McCann as its CIO in 2006, he was asked by the company’s executives to find a way to better connect the 3,000 employees spread out across more than 60 locations around the world. The usual tools, mainly email and telephone, hadn’t yielded the results the company wanted in terms of building a common company culture.

The company’s IT infrastructure was heavily Microsoft-based, with the 2003 version of SharePoint already installed and the 2007 SharePoint on the way. With the latter, Harrison knew that Microsoft had added social software capabilities to SharePoint, including MySites, social networking profiles for the enterprise.

Harrison decided to start with social networking, and has since built a social network mixing the built-in social tools of the SharePoint platform with technology from NewsGator, a vendor that offers enterprise Real Simple Syndication (RSS), a technology that streams relevant information to employees over portals such as corporate intranets. In this case, such information is centered around industry news and deals with Universal McCann’s clients, which include large corporations such as Sony, Johnson & Johnson and Exxon Mobile.

“We wanted everyone to feel one culture and one set of objectives,” Harrison says. “Because we’re so distributed, we had to build a common social fabric virtually.”