Twitter shows Chinese developers through developer tools

NetEase technology News October 24, according to Bloomberg reported that Twitter found a new way to enter China. The company launched a mobile developer service at the flight meeting yesterday, through which Twitter could establish business contacts with Chinese developers, whether they use their microblogging services or not.

Chinese technology giants such as Alibaba and Baidu have already used some of Twitter's tools. The San Francisco Company's new developer tool, known as fabric, has 28 languages and is available in 216 countries. One of the new features is called digits, which allows users to register mobile applications using phone numbers.

"It's clear that China's mobile economy is very large, which helps us develop our business there and that when we develop these tools, we know we have to be global," said Jeff Seibert, head of mobile platform for Twitter, in an interview Jeff Saiport. "China is the Internet market with the largest number of netizens, but social media companies in the United States have not yet infiltrated it, making social media tools for local Internet companies grow rapidly, such as Tencent's micro-letters and Sina Weibo."

By using software tools to nurture developer relationships in China, Twitter's strategy is very similar to that of social-networking Facebook, whose services are also blocked in China. Vaughan Smith, vice president of Facebook, said in May that there were thousands of application developers in China using the company's tools. Wahn Smith Facebook has also established an online advertising business in China through its Hong Kong office to sell promotional information to Chinese companies that want to gain access to international users.

Facebook, which rented a property in Beijing this year to expand the business, was a participant in a question-and-answer meeting with Chinese answers earlier this week when CEO Mark Zuckerberg joined the advisory board of Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management. Although Twitter does not currently have a branch office in China and no staff, its executives, including CEO Dick Cosdoro Dick Costolo, have visited China.

Twitter has been trying to boost international revenues, with 78% of its active users coming from outside the US, but only 33% per cent of overseas revenue. Baidu and Alibaba used Twitter's crashlytics tool to analyze the reasons for the failure. Twitter's ad Server MoPub is also available to Chinese application developers. But Twitter spokeswoman Jim Prossel Jim Prosser declined to say how many Chinese developers currently use the company's tools.

By separating new developer tools from the main product microblogging service, Twitter can continue to run these tools in countries where the site is blocked. In recent years, Turkey, North Korea, Pakistan, Iran and Egypt have all blocked Twitter. (Mushulin)