Washington: Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo is visiting China, the biggest market where the popular messaging service is banned, the company said on Monday.
The US firm said Costolo "is visiting China because he wants to learn more about the Chinese culture and the country's thriving technology sector.
"We have no plans to change anything about our service in order to enter the market."
Twitter's microblogging platform is banned in China, but a study by the research firm GlobalWebIndex last year said as many as 35 million people find ways around the "Great Firewall" and use it.
The visit comes after Friday's announcement that Weibo, sometimes referred to as the Chinese Twitter, was filing in New York for a share offering to raise USD 500 million.
The move will allow the popular Chinese-language social network to spin off from the Internet giant Sina, according to documents filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
The filing said Weibo had 129.1 million monthly active users in December and 61.4 million average daily active users. Weibo was launched in August 2009 with a business model reminiscent of that of Twitter.
