Will China Twitter?

Nov 4, 2007

Category: China, Media Tags:

NOTE: Please also visit newer posting on Twitter in China.

Twitter featured heavily at the Chinese Blogger Con 2007 here in Beijing, with conference attendees running a lively commentary on the proceedings that could be seen on large screen just off the stage.

Twittered comments called the panelists into question, answered questions raised on stage and one person in the late morning – likely victim of a late night out Saturday – Twittered over to find out whether the conference had already started.

On the wings of the conference, however, there was interesting discussion about whether Chinese Internet habits would lead to heavy usage of Twitter among the general population.

There are reasons why China might Twitter
- high mobile phone penetration
- lack of access to computers at home for many Chinese (who thus resort to Internet cafes)
- a preference for chat/IM over email

but also a major reason why not.
- Chinese generally prefer semi-anonymous platforms like bulletin boards over blogs. This is due both to concerns about the government keeping tabs on who is saying what, but also due to a preference for staying a below the radar when making comments.

Any further thoughts?

Technorati Tags: Beijing, China, cnbloggercon, Twitter

Discussion

Comments are disallowed for this post.

thomascrampton

Olly: Vineyard Cafe is great! Keep serving up those great brunches and I'll be following your Twitters!

Tom
Olly S

I just setup a Twitter account for my restaurant Vineyard Cafe in Beijing. It will be interesting to see if it is a popular way for users to get updates. It is in English only at the moment but if it proves popular I will look into creating a Chinese version. Since Twitter is only in English, does any one know of a good Chinese Twitter clone? More info about our Twitter integration can be seen here: http://www.vineyardcafe.cn/200...
Olly S

If there is anyone out who uses both Twitter and Plaxo Pulse - www.plaxo.com - I created a group for Beijing Twitterers to share their Twitter feeds with: http://beijingtwitter.plaxogro...

Feel free to join - it would be fun to see the conversations going on around the city.
Rick

Fanfou.com, iLaoDao.cn, TaoTao.com are other examples of lively Chinese twitter-like sites.

People are already using SMS, and IM clients like QQ, MSN, Gtalk to update their feeds.

So Chinese people are already twittering. I guess the only question is are they doing it as much as we expected they would, given the population size and mobile phone use.

Personally, I'd just chalk it up to the fact that most 2.0 services require more time to catch on in China.
Lyn Jeffery

It's also interesting to consider how Twitter is being used differently by Chinese people. I posted at http://www.virtual-china.org/2... about Isaac Mao's Twitterstream and how he's combining his RSS feeds as well as having public conversations with other Twitter users. Of course he's not the only one in the world doing this. Also, check out the "Chinese Twitter, " jiwai, at http://jiwai.de/ (in Chinese).
thomascrampton

<object height=" 353" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://seesmic.com/Standalone.swf?video=yR9pgz2xI2"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" height=" 353" src="http://seesmic.com/Standalone.swf?video=yR9pgz2xI2" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" wmode="transparent"></object>

a video reply by Japanophile via Seesmic.
xiaohan

another reason I do not expect a china twitter is twitterlike site are a cloesd society,people do not make friends on such site,they just keep in touch with their old friends and no new coming in, thats part of the reason why chinese like BBS more than blog.

Chinese like the feeling of being together,though they may do nothing.

If I have a mobile ,why should i post it on the twitter.Find some netizens in medium and smaller cities in China,i bet they donot like the idea of talking randomly on the net.