Unsurprisingly considering that it has been blocked in China since about 2009, Twitter has only a small user base in the East Asian country. However, an anonymous source inside Twitter has suggested that the site’s number of China-based users is even smaller than previously estimated.
Almost four years ago, it was estimated that the number of active Twitter users in that country was as high as 35.5 million. However, the aforementioned anonymous source has told TechCrunch that Twitter is, internally, estimated to have about 10 million active users in China.
Twitter is unable to calculate a figure more precise than an estimate, as these users connect to the social media site through VPN software enabling them to bypass the web censorship imposed by the government of the People’s Republic of China. So, these users will actually show up as accessing the site from the US, UK or any other country to which their VPN is set.
That 10 million figure is a tiny fraction of, as indicated by government data in January, China’s 688 million Internet users. Twitter’s own total active user base is 310 million.
