Twitter in China (Cloned of course)

May 20, 2008

The Pacific Ocean appeared to protect China from the Twitter craze hitting the US and Europe over the last year.

No more!

(Note for Luddite friends: Twitter is a San Francisco micro-blogging phenome that has thousands of people sending 160 character sms messages to each other. It is weird, yes, but also somewhat addictive.)

China has Twitter-ers both in English and in Chinese, but the local specialty of knock-offs has already kicked in. Adam J. Schokora of Edelman Digital speaks in this video about Twitter knock-offs Fanfou, Jiwai and the biggest of them all, Zuosa.

Schokora estimates that while there are only 7,000 Chinese-language Twitter-ers, Zuosa has more than 600,000.

Jiwai has the best looking homepage, but none of them have Twhirl-like offline client. How do you say “Business Opportunity” in Chinese?

To follow China Twitters in English, check out the Chinalist compiled by Christine Lu.

Discussion

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http://goslimquick.com

Schokora estimates that while there are only 7,000 Chinese-language Twitter-ers, Zuosa has more than 600,000.
juliaho

I'm using Freetur to access Twitter and Facebook now. It is very fast. Like it
KP

One of the things that are often underestimated about the Chinese is how familiar they are with the handheld device. Mobile communication is massive here in China and any form of mobile communication, be it, speech, SMS, push marketing, mobile commerce has and will have a huge uptake. This is no different and if there is an idea in the West, it will be in China soon enough. Community networking, especially with an anonymous model is massive. Search on domains like TwitterChina.com or regional names, they were registered as soon as the first press release hit the Internet. Thousands of businesses have failed in this region because they romanticize the 1.4 billion populations and how ‘this is our market reach, we can have all these people’ BUT this isn’t true for many industries; however it is for the communication industry. Even the guy in the rice fields has a mobile phone, be it pre paid. Community, Communication, China, the three ‘C’s’ for 2009. Watch and learn as they will indeed learn fast and dominate. This is my Western perspective having lived here in China for a few years and seen this phenomenon first hand. This is just the beginning. DS