Twitter CEO chides China
Credit: CNN (www.cnn.com)
By Mark Milian, CNN
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo criticized the Chinese government.
(CNN) -- "Dear Chinese Government," began a message sent late Thursday from Twitter CEO Dick Costolo.
"Year-long detentions for sending a sarcastic tweet are neither the way forward nor the future of your great people," he wrote on his Twitter profile.
Costolo's edict is no doubt a response to the Chinese woman who had been sentenced to a year in a labor camp for retweeting a message that officials in China disapproved of. The tweet mocked Chinese people who were protesting Japanese products.
In an hour, Costolo's message had well surpassed a hundred retweets -- an act similar to forwarding an e-mail, denoting interest in the content. It quickly climbed to the top spot on the list of trending tweets, an automated system that surfaces popular messages on the service.
A Chinese government official could not be reached late Thursday for comment on the tweet.
Chinese leaders have not been keen on information-sharing services like Twitter in the past. China has censored or blocked access to the website during major events, along with other blogs and social networks. Last year it put a wall in front of the site for Chinese Web surfers during the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protest.
Google has had a back-and-forth business relationship with China. It initially agreed to censor search results in that country but later backtracked.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg used his own website as a platform for talking about China recently, though his message was decidedly less controversial.
"What are the best Mandarin-speaking cities to visit in China?" Zuckerberg posed to users of a beta feature called Questions.
Zuckerberg is believed to be planning a trip to China, Forbes reports. The Asian country will be important to Facebook's business, he said at an event last month.
Credit: CNN (www.cnn.com)
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