Over the past several decades, young people’s media environment has changed in several ways. Changes include increases in both the number and kinds of media available, in the number of choices each medium offers, in the fidelity with which symbols and images can be transmitted, and in the degree of privacy with which each medium can be experienced. Technological advances have put young people in constant contact with their peers via cell phones, instant messaging, e-mail, and pagers. Not only have new media appeared, but older media have evolved, offering more channels more vividly than ever before.
Chinese authorities have blocked Internet access to Twitter, Flicker, Bing, Live.com, YouTube, Blogger and several other sites. That means I can't use this blog when I back to China! :(
As far as solutions for evading the block go, you can find some advice here and here. Furthermore, Twitter may be working if you’re using third party apps to access it, such as TweetDeck.
Since our government block so many social networking, therefore we create our own one. We have Chinese version facebook, called Renren (www.renren.com); Chinese Twitter, Weibo (www.weibo.com); Chinese Google, Baidu (www.baidu.com); Chinese Youtube, Youku (www.youku.com).
Here is a Video I found, just shows how powerful social media is and how China is transforming into a socialist state faster than the Government can handle. Watch this video from CNN – Global Public Square (GPS) with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (a very intelligent man!).
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2009/01/14/gps.wen.jiabao.intv.cnn?iref=videosearch
watch what he says about the internet: 16:00 (I think he uses Google vs Baidu )
watch what he says about democracy and socialism: 23:00
i suggest u watch the whole video.
For example, Sina’s Weibo, is China’s popular microblogging site, grew to more than two times the size of Twitter last month, Sina Corporation (SINA) chief executive Charles Chao said recently. Sina said it has 250 million registered uses on Weibo. By comparison, Twitter has slightly over 100 million. People use it every day as Twitter. I have one, so I will spent more than 2 hours on it everyday. Actually, some Chinese people doesn't care about those "foreign" social networking. First of all, English isn't our first language, so many people still doesn't know how to say it. Secondly, the "copy cat" social networking somehow has gone beyond the original one. Calling Sina's Weibo “Chinese Twitter” is downplaying the superiority of Weibo. For users who use both Twitter and Weibo, Twitter is no comparison in terms of feature, performance, and usability. Try Weibo and you will see the difference. Twitter has a lot of catching up to do here.
American NBA official organizations report that they have more followers in Chinese Sina Weibo than in Twitter. NBA promoted their Weibo in just three months and reached more than 2.5 million followers, and the Twitter, they have been operating a few years, but less than 2.4 million followers.
Sina’s Weibo had more than 5 million users in early March 2010, according to global marketing and media relations firm Oglivy. By the end of the first quarter 2011, the Weibo population swelled to 140 million users, the company said in an earnings statement dated May 11. Sina’s Weibo has nearly 8 times more users than Twitter. In 2010, Twitter had approximately 17 million users in the US, according to an Edison Research report called Twitter Usage in America 2010. Even if Twitter doubled in size this year, which is unlikely, its Twitter account numbers would be dwarfed by Sina accounts alone. In fact, according to Edison, Twitter has around 20 million users as of the first quarter 2011.
(http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2011/05/17/chinas-weibos-vs-uss-twitter-and-the-winner-is/)
Citizen media is become more and more important in our New media. Not only stars, more and more organizations, officials, foreign institutions have also set up the Weibo. It is more quickly than through third-party websites and media reports.
But there still have an interesting thing, which is there only has one twitter in the world, but China have two "twitters". As the Video said, QQ, the China's largest Internet service. It's looks like MSN or facebook chatting. According to their user base, they also open the Twitter service. So including Renren, sometimes people will have more than three social networkings.
