There's more to social networking than Facebook and Twitter

Did you know…

∙ Twitter and Facebook are blocked in most parts of China by the Great Firewall of China?

∙ China has 485 million Internet users, more than any other country in the world?

∙ WeiBo.com, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, already has 195 million users (almost as many as Twitter)?

∙ Manchester Business School has 22,000 followers on Kaixin (the Chinese equivalent of Facebook)?

∙ Loughborough has 1200 Chinese students?

On September 21st, André Schappo (Computer Science) and his student Christine Liu will be giving a session demonstrating the use of the main Chinese social networking services. They argue that international Universities such as Loughborough should become more aware of non-Western social networking and exploit the opportunities they offer to communicate with both current and prospective students. Lboro staff should get in touch with me if they would like to attend.

In the meantime, you can find out more about the non-Western Web on Andre’s personal blog at http://schappo.blogspot.com/. In particular, for a list of Western organisations / companies with a presence on the Sina Weibo microblogging site, see http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_6fab54120100wohn.html .