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Google uses Twitter in Chinese search results

March 26, 2010 By Dan Thornton

Twitter search results are now being indexed and displayed by Google to Chinese users, as reported in the Los Angeles Times.

It effectively gets around the nine-month block of Twitter in China, and the timing is no accident as Google has stopped censoring Chinese search results and redirects users from mainland China to Google.com.hk.

It means that tweets can now appear in Google search results for terms which are popular on Twitter. The LA Times reports that on Thursday morning, it included ‘how to circumvent China’s Internet firewall, why Google decided to exit China and a vaccine scandal unfolding in central China’

Although Twitter results are now part of Google search in the rest of the world, the introduction at this time seems to be a further attempt to strengthen Google’s case against the Chinese government. But given that China has the most effective attempt at a repressive, censored internet, it will be interesting to see whether any technology is introduced to strip the content back out before users can see it – it’s already managing to block uncensored searches for terms such as ‘Amnesty’ or ‘Dalai’ in just a day after the redirect to google.com.hk took place.

Google has claimed that the Twitter results had already been available for a week as part of a global rollout, and the release is unrelated to other events.

Despite the original cyber attacks on Google and fallout which has followed, the search company has said it will continue research and development work and its advertising sales team in China.

This use of Twitter feels like a small move in a game of chess between the search giant and an ideology which isn’t going to back down easily.

East vs West approaches to using Twitter

June 3, 2009 By Dan Thornton

Interesting contrast between the attitudes of China and the U.S to Twitter at the moment.

In China, access has been stopped to Twitter (and new Microsoft search engine Bing). The likely reason is the anniversay of Tiananmen Square protest. However, like a lot of people analysing usage figures for Twitter, the Chinese authorities seem to have forgotten about Twitter clients, such as Seesmic Desktop, for the moment.

Compare that to the U.S – with the military unveiling a social media strategy for news from Afghanistan which includes Facebook, Youtube and Twitter. There’s an official Twitter account at www.twitter.com/usfora which currently has 2985 followers. There’s some more detail in a Wired article.

Twitter etiquette – are Tweeple a better class of people?

June 27, 2008 By Dan Thornton

Every popular social network contains people and accounts which, for one reason or another, are undesirable. Spammers, con artists, egomaniacs (Isn’t that all of us?), the plain offensive etc all inhabit the social world – as they do in the real world.

Recently I unfollowed 3 such accounts on Twitter. None were malicious in the same vein as people setting up phishing scams. But two constantly used it as a platform for personal attacks – either against one individual, or against a group of individuals, without providing anything of value.

A third autofed his latest blog entries but refused to engage in conversation, or even reply to direct messages. That’s just about excusable if you’re constantly breaking lots of news e.g. @BBC for BBC News, or you’ve reached the scale of someone like Robert Scoble, who follows and is followed by over 20,000 people. It’s not ideal, but excusable…but if you’re batting at under 100 for example, then there really is no reason for ignoring anyone who wants to interact with you.

That all might seem a bit negative – but then I flipped it around in my head. I’ve unfollowed 3 people – not had to block them, or complain about them, but just unfollowed them with a simple click of a button. But due to a policy of reading through a few details before adding people, those are 3 of 714 I’m following. So that’s 0.42% of all the people I have chosen to follow, and an even smaller percentage of people that I’ve had any contact with.

It’d be interesting to find out how this compared with other networks, but from a subjective viewpoint, it’s a lot less. And the number one connection tool for irritation still seems to be Myspace.… The perentage on there is probably closer to 20%!

It’s why we persevere with Twitter despite the downtime, and it’s why Plurk is gaining traction. The days of average users amassing 1000s of random contacts for the sake of it is waning by people who actually want to use these tools for a tangible benefit. The days of using them for what my colleague, David Cushman describes as ‘self–forming communities of (global) niche shared interest’ is here for more and more people. And Twitter is all the better for it…