Comments on: Overview of Micro-blogging in China

By: Chinese Media Attacks 51mole.com For Addicting Kids; Regulatory Risks in China Remain High | Bay-jinger

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:34:37 +0000

[...] business (and investing in start-ups) in China – just think of all the Chinese Twitter clones getting shut down over the summer. In the long term, even if the government wants to retain such a heavy-handed approach towards the [...]

By: Digital East Asia » Blog Archive » Chinese Media Attacks 51mole.com For Addicting Kids; Regulatory Risks in China Remain High

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:50:08 +0000

By: The Bayjinger

The Bayjinger — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:59:09 +0000

The censorship is intentionally not predictable – this forces websites like Sina.com to self-censor first; if something is “illegal”, they will receive take-down notices from relevant departments; their site may also be blocked too at the same time. I think a critical issue here is that the government does not want people to know they are doing censorship. And while the technique is improving, it is also reducing the value of the services – for example there are so many keywords being censored nowadays that it is almost too hard to have a normal conversation. Not sure if this fully addresses your question…

By: alenjoy

alenjoy — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 16:05:46 +0000

Thanks for the reply! I see. So the main issue is whether there could be a reliable service under the censorship. Is the censorship predictable? If not, is it due to technical issues? Will reliability of the service improve if the censorship technique gets improved?

By: Twitter’s $1B valuation and what it means to China | Bay-jinger

Twitter’s $1B valuation and what it means to China | Bay-jinger — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 00:20:43 +0000

[...] why then, is a tool that creates real economic value blocked in China? And not just Twitter, but most of its Chinese web clones. The direct and obvious reason is that these tools create headaches for the censorship program of [...]

By: The Bayjinger

The Bayjinger — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 03:52:40 +0000

Hey I love the discussion! Helps me to be more precise in my thinking too.
To answer your question, I think that from the adoption curve, the early adopters tend to be the more socially active / politically active people (empirical observation). The majority of users on Fanfou were still talking about the usual pop-culture stuff – just like on Twitter, perhaps 99% of the tweets are not “useful” – but the minority was discussing really important and sensitive topics (like corruption). Because of these minority users, the government will shut down the service, and as a result the majority of users also lose the service. That’s why new micro-blogs like Sina’s are so picky about users and censoring content.
I think from the users perspective, if a service was used casually and shut down, they will not bother to sign up to another service. Only the hardcore users will try to continue to use micro-blogging, and that’s why a lot of the Chinese users on Twitter are so political (they are the hardcore users).

By: alenjoy

alenjoy — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 01:02:27 +0000

Please do not take as a political comment. I do not see why the censorship is the main reason that microblogging is not thriving in China. Short message as well as QQ both grow into huge business. And people are not online for sensitive information. Maybe I do not understand the difference. Would you mind point out?