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To have a social media reach in China is next to impossible. Yet, in the race between Facebook, Google, and Twitter , where all three of them are trying to expand their reach in China, Twitter is running ahead.
Twitter has appointed Kathy Chen as its Greater China Managing Director, Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey said in a tweet on Thursday.
A big welcome to Twitter, @KathyChen2016! She joins us as our MD for China!
— Jack (@jack) April 15, 2016
Chen will lead Twitter’s efforts to cater to its advertisers, influencers and other business partners in China. Twitter grew its number of Chinese advertisers by more than 300 percent over the last year. Chen will not only work to bring in more ad dollars, but also to sign on more data licensing partners who are interested in Twitter’s data insights from over 500 million tweets sent per day.
Thank you for your support as we connect Greater China to the world! A video by @kathychen2016 , MD of @TwitterGCN pic.twitter.com/aX9GzZe2sc
— Twitter GCN (@TwitterGCN) April 15, 2016
“She's got a real rich background in tech, so I’m sure they’re delighted to have her,” said Betsy Page Sigman, a professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. “The social media over in China is pretty deeply ingrained. But I think for businesses, they can market to the rest of the world that allows Twitter.”
Her professional experiences include Microsoft’s cloud and enterprise product group for its Asia-Pacific region where she served as general manager. Between roles, she worked at Cisco. She got her start in the early days of dot-com tech at 3Com Networking Technology, in 1997.
While Twitter and Facebook have been blocked in China since 2009, people in China have taken advantage of their own localized social networks, including WeChat and Weibo. Twitter opened its offices in Hong Kong last year and launched a new Twitter account for Twitter Great China on Thursday. Twitter is blocked in China, but people use it anyway in their social networks.