Twittering China
Kaiser Kuo has a good writeup on his Twitter conversion. For China-based users it’s been a particularly useful application the last few weeks:
Pick the right folks to follow and there’s real value: They link to interesting reads — this is to me probably the most useful thing about Twitter — and make trenchant, sometimes insightful comments. During the recent troubles in Western China, I was following Twitter feeds from people on the scene, providing first-hand perspective that was nearly impossible to find in the press.
This is a great example of the power of citizen blogging/microblogging being not just a frivolous act (ie. tweeting: “Sitting here watching paint dry”)
With the rising tensions over the Olympic torch relay in Europe, the boycott of Carrefour, the roughing up of an American English teacher by a mob in Hunan and the takedown of Web sites by pro-China hackers, Twitter has been ahead of the curve by assembling an ad hoc community of folks across different cities, pointing to blog posts, first hand accounts from the ground and BBS postings reflecting local sentiment. It’s something that all China-oriented reporters should check out and experience first-hand.
I’ll be addressing the Hong Kong Journalists Association next week about China’s Internet and will absolutely talk about Twitter and its China-based counterparts.
April 26th, 2008 17:25
Andrew, this is facinating. Working in the new media industry, there is regular discussion about what uses Twitter actually has. This is a brilliant example.
Another case of the growing importance of the internet in disseminating information where the conventional media is inadequate. To know that this is happening is one thing, do you have any idea of the scale of use or the changes that it has allowed?
Bob