Social Search - The Baidu Way

Bambi Franciscos newsletter had an interesting commentary on Social Search and how the Chinese Portal baidu was planning on staying ahead of the aggressive competition (yahoo & google). I am yet to fully grasp the possibilities in the Chinese market - seem like the forays by US companies into the Land in the Middle in the past have been less than stellar (no automotive or manufacturing company has yet to turn a profit on billion dollar investments). Therefore when a company like Baidu pulls 'a skype' and list on an american exchange as the single most succesful offering in more than 5 years I have to raise my danish brows a bit and wonder where this is going. Baidu's strength obviously is its local search ability and deep understanding of the local market, but it become clear that their real stand-out is in engines just beginning to be deployed by the American players: Social Search and using the power of the community in the portal. As you may know I have a bit of a thing for social networking and the interaction that the web - and soon to be mobile - enable you to have. Therefore when search-engines show a way to make the community relevant (the key to success; relevance - or scantily clad women) to search, we should start paying attention - because once we add location based services and communitize the interaction the searchengine become the global community and user-generated results like yelp.com all of a sudden gain significant power. I'd love to hear your comments on 1) China and Tech and 2)the location based local search debate - fact or fad?!