Twitter launches Chinese service

(Global Times)

10:44, September 16, 2011

Social networking website Twitter added the Chinese language to its services Thursday, targeting Chinese users outside the mainland, as the popular portal remains inaccessible here.

Industry analysts suggested that the launch would not provide an immediate boost to Twitter's mainland ambitions, considering Internet regulations and the success of domestic microblogs.

The new service will be in both simplified and traditional Chinese. Twitter, now available in 17 languages, also launched three other Asian languages Thursday: Hindi, Tagalog and Malay, as part of its global expansion plan. 

The Chinese service is meant to reach native Chinese speakers living outside the mainland, PC World magazine quoted Twitter spokeswoman Carolyn Penner as saying Thursday.

The size of this market comes from 35 million people living in 30 countries, she said.

The figure is a fraction of the 485 million Internet users in the mainland as of June, according to statistics published by the China Internet Network Information Center, the country's domain management and information service agency.

Consulting firm McKinsey & Company has predicted 750 million Chinese will be online by 2015.

Twitter generates $1.75 in revenues for each user, according to the MIT Technology Review published in July.

This means that Twitter is missing out on a market worth at least tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars.

In 2009, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube became inaccessible in the mainland for not meeting China's Internet regulations. 

Users there can only access these websites by using VPNs, proxies or other means. 

In the same year, portal giant sina.com launched Weibo, a Twitter-like microblogging service, in China. Sina's rival sohu.com and messenger service provider Tencent quickly followed suit. 

As of July, Tencent's microblogging service had 175 million active monthly users, followed by Sina with 141 million users and Sohu with 65 million users, according to the Internet industry observing company iResearch in Beijing. 

By comparison, only 1.5 million people from the mainland managed to log on to Twitter in July, iResearch analyst You Tianyu told the Global Times.

You noted that regardless of Internet regulations in the mainland, Twitter would have had difficulties in competing with its Chinese counterparts, considering the cultural and language barriers.

Foreign IT firms usually take longer to gain a foothold in China than local counterparts, which are more apt at navigating the country's cultural and political landscape, You said.

"For example, Yahoo was very successful in Japan, but in China, it is not on a par with major domestic portals. Twitter would have been slow in China too," he added.

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