By Star Chang, posted Jan 14, 2012 at 3:19 PM, 575 views,

Jack Dorsey Hopes Twitter Can be Unblocked in China

Twitter has about 300 million users right now, but it is still blocked in China, depriving it of a market of 500 million potential users. Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter is currently visiting China, where he has expressed his disappointment about Chinese government’s decision to block Twitter …

Dorsey was in Shanghai China, and he could not read any tweets during his stay. He felt unfortunate and disappointing of the blocking of his popular online service in the communist country. Dorsey has about 1.8 million followers, and he has greet by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei online during his visit. Ai Weiwei has said he hopes China can open its market to foreign microblogging website sooner than North Korea. Ai’s activism has made him a thorn in the side of the Chinese authorities, he has being reviewed by the Beijing tax bureau for tax evasion. During 2010, Jack Dorsey and Ai Weiwei have already discussed about the development of social media tools in China.

Sina Weibo is the most popular microblogging website in China, with one out of every 106 Chinese internet users owning an account. In the United Kingdom, by contrast, only one out of every 227 internet users has a Twitter account, and one out of every 434 in the United States. Since China has the world’s largest number of internet users, it may be hugely damaging for Twitter if the service remains blocked by the Chinese authorities. In the mean time, Chinese internet users could only get overcross the government’s ‘great firewall’ by using a VPN account.

Source: YAHOO News, WantChinaTimes