Breaking into the Asian Market - Is Twitter becoming the world's message board?
Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few years, you already know about the social media phenomena that is Twitter. Twitter has an advantage over any other news medium in the world because of the fact that its content streams directly from the public in real time, providing users the ability to see what others are “tweeting” about instantaneously. No editors, filters, or any of the like, just pure content straight from the source. Important events become trending topics within minutes and spread like wildfire all over the globe; there is no stopping the beast. Twitter users can post tweets several ways: directly via the web interface (twitter.com), mobile applications (twitterfon, etc.), and even via SMS from any standard cell phone. Users can upload tweets from almost anywhere at anytime.
Several weeks ago Twitter via SMS became available to users in India and even more recently to users in Japan. Although there are several Twitter-like applications already in use Japan, Twitter is making efforts to expand its presence in the Asian market. There are barriers facing Twitter's Asian expansion, most pronounced being the cultural attitudes towards micro-blogging and the threat of cyberstalking. Though these are serious issues which are present to all users globally, they should not hinder the social media giant from breaking ground in the east.
