Aoi Sola Twitter: Chinese Followers Jump the Great Firewall

by Scott Wu | April 21, 2010 at 11:36 am

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Aoi Sola Twitter Gets Massive Chinese Followers

Japanese porn star Aoi Sola (蒼井そら or 蒼井空) started using Twitter at the end of March. Since her Twitter account was discovered by a fan in China, Aoi Sola's follower count has skyrocketed. What is surprising is that China has blocked access to the microblogging site Twitter with its infamous "Great Firewall".

Aoi Sola is surprised by her new wave of followers as well. She asked on Twitter, "What sparked so much discussion about me by Chinese people? What happened?" Aoi Sola on April 15, gave a shout out through her blog to her massive Chinese followers. The blog post, titled "To All Aoi Sola's Fans in China", was translated to Chinese by a fan.

The "Twitter incident" has caused reverberations in China and Japan. Speaking truthfully, this was a little unexpected, even for me.

Speaking "without modesty," I know that there are some Aoi fans in Asia. But when I directly faced the figures on Twitter, I could hardly hide my surprise. Thanks everybody for tweeting about me.

Aoi Sola ended hinting a possible visit to China: "When will I be able to meet my Chinese fans? To hold a fan club meeting in China? It sounds like a good idea, and worthy of my anticipation! When the time comes, remember to come and show your support!"

According to Twitter Counter, Aoi Sola's follower got the first jump on April 1 before the spike starting April 10. On April 10, Aoi Sola had 1612 followers, and on April 11, the follower count increased to 12,293. Today on April 21, she has more than 55,500 Twitter followers, even though she tweets mostly in Japanese.

Aoi Sola is apparently a Apple lover. She tweeted about her getting an iPad on April 20.

The Chinese government has already blocked many websites to control the information coming in and out of the country. The firewall is not perfect however. People with sufficient knowledge of the web would be able to by-pass the firewall, for example through proxy server or virtual private network (VPN). Internet users can connect to a server not blocked by the firewall, and access blocked websites from there.

Among the massive followers, some are from Hong Kong and Taiwan, which are not affected by the Great Firewall. Japanese porn stars have massive followers for Chinese because of stricter control of pornographic material and virtually non-existent porn industry.