Synthesio, Global Social Media Monitoring

Breaking Down The Great Firewall of China

By Julie | 

05 Mar 13 | 

Category: International online monitoring

Synthesio Celebrates March – China Listening Month

In the spirit of February’s festivities around Chinese New Year, we’ve decided to carry on the celebrations into March and dedicate the entire month to exploring the state of social media in China in 2013, the tremendous advancements in social media generated by our friends in the East, and the inherent value this represents to the world’s leading brands through listening.

So today, we officially declare March – China Social Media Listening Month!

March will be jam-packed with compelling and fun posts around everything to do with Chinese social media, including an informative white paper on the current state of social media in China, as well as a close look at some of the top social media sites in the most populous country in the world.

We’ll be sharing an exciting infographic on the most influential global celebrities, and reveal how popular they are in the eyes of the Chinese market. *Spoiler alert*…Chinese social media users are surprisingly keen on a certain NBA player for the Miami Heat.

And to top it all off, we’ll be hosting a fascinating webinar with Nate Elliott from Forrester Research to discuss best practices for social media listening in Asia.

To help get you all excited for China Listening Month, here’s a quick teaser sneak peek from our White Paper (coming later this month) - Breaking Down the Great Firewall of China - check out some key insights below, and be sure to check back often throughout March for our next posts!

Did you know?


  • Over half of the internet users in China participate in social media. With almost 1 billion social media users, and the largest annual increase in the number of internet users in Asia, China is now a world leader online.


  • China is one of the most restricted countries in the world in terms of internet, but these constraints have directly contributed to the staggering success of local Chinese social media sites. China’s great firewall, The Golden Shield, is enforced by the Chinese government and serves as a barrier to international sites like Facebook and Twitter.


  • The Chinese account for 35% of the entire Asian population, and 52% of all Asian web users.


  • Foreign companies wishing to establish a presence in the media or social media in China must apply for government authorization, which is only granted if the company agrees to respect the constraints and censorship imposed by the government.



    • So let’s get the month started with some good conversation. How do you feel about the state of social media in China? Does your brand listen and engage with this market? Post your thoughts below and Happy China Listening Month everyone!

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    8 comments

    8 Responses to “Breaking Down The Great Firewall of China”

    1. Social Media Outlook Says:
      March 6th, 2013 at 2:41 pm

      Does Synthesio track Sina Weibo?

    2. Julie Meredith - Synthesio Says:
      March 6th, 2013 at 9:41 pm

      Yes! We can collect data from Sina Weibo. Here’s a little more info on our data coverage.http://synthesio.com/corporate/en/resources/data-coverage/

      Let me know if you have anymore questions at all :)

      Julie Meredith – Synthesio
      @julie_meredith

    3. Social Media Outlook Says:
      March 13th, 2013 at 1:46 pm

      I see that you list Orkut as something you collect. I was under the impression that they only let you store 15 days of data. Is that no longer true, or are you deleting that content as it expires?

    4. Julie Meredith - Synthesio Says:
      March 14th, 2013 at 1:58 pm

      We store all data in our own database, so anything collected is still available beyond 15 days, even if the original data itself is no longer available.

    5. Social Media Outlook Says:
      March 14th, 2013 at 3:32 pm

      I think you misunderstood. I was saying that I believe the Orkut Terms of Service prohibit storing data on your own servers beyond a set period of time (which may be even shorter than I thought? See https://developers.google.com/orkut/rel/guidelines#data )

    6. Julie Meredith -Synthesio Says:
      March 15th, 2013 at 1:24 pm

      Yes – good point. Synthesio complies with fair use. We do provide our clients with an excerpt (a short contextual extract of the content), but they have to go to the original site to read the full content.

    7. Julie Meredith - Synthesio Says:
      March 26th, 2013 at 6:08 pm

      Hi there, just following up on our conversation. Do you have any more questions around our coverage? We’d be more than happy to provide you with more information – let me know if you’d like to chat about this further :) julie@synthesio.com

    8. useful content Says:
      April 7th, 2013 at 10:16 pm

      I witnessed those post nice article

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