Jack Dorsey, creator of the microblogging service, suggests that you can’t make
Jack Dorsey, creator of the microblogging service, suggests that you can’t make a call on a contender unless you give it a fighting chance.
“The unfortunate fact is, we’re just not allowed to compete in this market, and that’s not up to us to change,” he said Thursday in Hong Kong at AsiaD, a conference hosted by All Things Digital, an online publishing partner of The Wall Street Journal.
Twitter is blocked in China, which has more Internet users than any other nation, and in its place a number of Chinese microblogging services, namely Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo, have sprung up and caught fire in its place.
The Chinese services have long been packed with features that Twitter didn’t have initially, leading many users of both platforms and analysts to believe that the homegrown services better serve the Chinese market anyway. But Mr. Dorsey said he believes there are many Chinese users who are hungry to use his global platform.
Twitter is making headway in other Asian markets, including in the Philippines and India, Mr. Dorsey said. In Japan, he said, Twitter executives noticed that the service wasn’t just popular among people, but among virtual pets, causing a flurry of activity in Japanese from Tamagotchi toys interacting with their owners via Twitter.