By Tom Dunlap
The micro-blogging service continues to make headlines around the world this week, with an emphasis on Asia.
Several high-profile social networking sites have been blocked in mainland China, said Michael Anti, a well-known Chinese blogger who used to work for the
New York Times. Anti
revealed some interesting Twitter tidbits recently in an interview with Danwei.
"Twitter is a new thing in China. The censors need time to figure out what it is. So enjoy the last happy days of twittering before the fate of Youtube descends on it one day.
By the way, I want to point out that the Chinese Twitterland is funnier than the English one, for a Chinese tweet can have three times the volume of an English tweet, thanks to the high information intensity of the Chinese language. 140 Chinese characters can make up all the full elements of a news piece with the "5 Ws" (Who, What, Where, When and HoW). But the joy of the Chinese Twitterland is more fragile, and I hope that it will live longer in this country."
We're close to the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, and China is clearly stepping up its crackdown on high-tech dissidents. The list of blocked sites (or partially blocked sites) is growing and now includes Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Hotmail, and others. There's a lively discussion on censorship and the politics of modern China at
Slashdot.
Meanwhile, Twitter is being embraced by soldiers in the same hemisphere. The U.S. military is using Tweets, Facebook postings, and other social networking tools to get its message out. Check out this
NPR.com story.
Sounds like a great idea to me, considering how young adults are getting their news these days. But I can't shake an odd vision of two soldiers on the battlefield of the future, tweeting each other in the middle of a fight. How is the 140-character limit going to work if a captain needs to give an impassioned "
Once more into the breach!" battle cry?
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