Mumbai: In a recent turn of events, micro-blogging site Twitter has estimated that it has approximately 10 million users on its bandwagon from China despite ban.
Past Estimates showed that China has close to 35.5 million Twitter users, but the actual number does appear to be less. An internal source who spoke to TechCrunch pointed out recently that the service only has 10 million users in China.
However, the number is an internal estimate and even the company isn’t fully sure. The reason cited for the incongruity is related to tallying up China-based users who connect to the service via virtual private network (VPM) software.
VPM makes it possible for these users to use an internet connection outside China, allowing them to bypass the country’s web censorship. To put matters to perspective, a China-based user accessing Twitter via VPN will show up as an user from the US, Britain, Singapore or any place else the VPM is located.
The report further pointed out that the figure does represent a slight drop in Twitter’s total user count of 310 million, out of which 65 million belong to the US and 245 can be attributed to overseas users. According to Government data from December 2015, it is just a fraction of the total 688 million internet users in China.
It is highly unlikely that Twitter would take steps to get itself unblocked in China, which will mean complying with censorship demands and self-policing, as Linkedin had done.
That said, the likeliness of people using Twitter amid the ban is an additional increment for Twitter who are struggling with proceedings as of now.
