Social media giant Twitter hopes to do more business with Chinese companies after opening up a regional office in Hong Kong, even though the it has been banned from operating on the mainland since 2009.
The main objective of the new office is to help Chinese companies attract, and advertise to, overseas customers, the social network claims.
With more than 250 million active daily users around the world who send out over half a billion tweets every single day, Twitter hopes to provide online advertising services to Chinese companies with expanding international operations.
“We are capitalising on this growing trend of the most ambitious, entrepreneurial, and successful Chinese companies wanting to go global, and we believe that Twitter is an essential way for them to connect and engage with the world,” says Shailesh Rao, Twitter’s vice president of Asia-Pacific, Americas, and emerging markets.
The network and its content are still censored in China, however, and Virtual Private Network (VPN) access remains the only way to circumnavigate the “Great Firewall”.
Although we contend that Twitter would have loved to be able to operate in the world’s biggest internet market, it can still profit by working with Chinese companies looking to gain more Western viewers.
For example, companies such as state-owned propaganda/news agencies Xinhua and CCTV both have official Twitter accounts in an attempt to reach a broader audience.
Despite the office being within a stone’s throw to the mainland, Twitter has said that it has no intentions to re-enter the Chinese market; probably for the better, as Beijing is showing no signs of letting up its strict internet laws.
Photo: Wikimedia
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