Boston, MA 03/18/2014 (wallstreetpr) – Is Twitter Inc, (NYSE:TWTR) coming to China, with its CEO setting his foot in the country? Well companies spokesman says that Dick Costolo’s visiting China is for his personal interest to probe the depth of Chinese culture and know more about its thriving technology market.
Costolo is scheduled to meet Shanghai government officials including representatives of the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone established in 2013 to test and then promote market liberalization measures. He will also meet administrators from Fudan University in Shanghai who is sponsoring for his visa and have a round-table forum with the students.
Twitter’s charging for the forbidden
But the speculation about the company’s ambitions in the country, after Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Yahoo Inc (NASDAQ:YHOO)‘s retreating due to the heavy-handed censorship of the Internet in China, is supported by the CEO’s own speech in June, when Costolo declared to the American Society of News Editors convention that he would like see Twitter Inc, (NYSE:TWTR) booming in China as Twitter in China, but the Twitter company will not surrender its principles of the platform and change the way that users will be able to communicate.
When and how?
So the question remains. When and how? In a statement to Reuters, Twitter Inc, (NYSE:TWTR) declined to disclose what Costolo intended to discuss with Chinese officials, and rejected the possibility of opening an office anytime in the near future in China, which means the company has to obey the Chinese law.
The bright side
But Twitter still has the reason to try the unknowable. Despite the official ban, many savvy Chinese citizens and even state-own media organizations regularly use virtual private networking (VPN) technology to circumvent censorship. Dissident artist Ai Weiwei, has tweets of more than 105,000 and more than 238,000 are loyal followers. The state-own Xinhua news agency, Hu Xijin, the renowned editor of the pro-government Global Times newspaper, and official broadcaster China Central Television, all have active Twitter Inc, (NYSE:TWTR) accounts.
With all the ambiguity, China’s biggest Twitter-like social network, SinaWeibo with more than 129 million monthly users, announced the company’s ambition to sell shares on the U.S. stock market. It could be a response to the competition, and a keen survival instinct aiming at an upcoming battle.
