Twitter is Working in China, While the Trick Lasts

Twitter.com now working freely in China, with this alternative server trick.

Good news, everyone! Twitter is now working in China, without the need for a proxy or a VPN, via a genuine, alternative Twitter server.

This morning, @安卓论坛 shared a link on Weibo stating that the link can access Twitter’s service without having to ‘climb the Great Firewall (GFW).’ (The message was somehow deleted at the point of writing this post.) It leads to an alternative Twitter server – give it a try – on which mainland Chinese users can tweet freely.

Although micro-blogging services like Sina and Tencent Weibo are hot properties in China, most Chinese micro-bloggers don’t know much about Twitter — because it has been blocked since June 2009. However this didn’t stop Twitter from rolling out its simplified Chinese version which we reported a couple of days ago. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that Twitter would like to have big plans for China — its 500 million user strong Internet market is too attractive to be missed. We wonder if this new server is part of a bigger scheme…

I tried the alt server, and it is working. When accessing it, a certificate warning pops up, showing the details of the server, and proving that it’s a genuine Twitter-issed security certificate, as shown here:

Despite the warning message that most browsers will flash up, a quick look at the security certificate shows this is a genuine Twitter.com certificate (and site).

My take is that Twitter is accessible here now as it is accessed through that new server, which itself isn’t blocked, but is pulling data from mobile.twitter.com (which is domain-blocked). I can’t access Twitter by entering mobile.twitter.com in the browser.

Note that this might not be a deliberate ploy by Twitter to bypass the notorious GFW. It could just be an alternative server that, luckily for us, now works in mainland China. But the timing of having a Simplified Chinese for Twitter and the roll out of this Twitter China proxy looks intriguing. Whatever the reason, lots of Chinese geeks are happily jumping on the chance to tweet without the need for a proxy or a VPN.

We have sent an enquiry to Twitter HQ to find out more details. We’ll update if we hear back. Meanwhile, for folks in China, enjoy and experiment with Twitter before the big, bad Net Nanny blocks it.