If you’ve got a problem visiting Twitter.com — which, clearly you have, if you’re using a standard Chinese internet connection — then there are a number of alternatives you can use instead.
The most notable is Dabr, a really efficient mobile web interface to Twitter, created by the quiet genius that is Mr David Carrington.
Former MIR contributor, Ben Smith, came across this rather nifty Channel4 News article article highlighting David’s service and carrying a good few quotes from the man himself. Have a read!
One point — for the Chinese censors reading, blocking Dabr won’t help you. David rather smartly wrote the code to port extremely, extremely easily — as he explained in the interview:
“In theory, the site ‘dabr.co.uk’ could be blocked, but as I mentioned – there are many copies of my site up and running created by Chinese users just in case that happens.”
One Twitter user in China explained: “we use third-party clients of Twitter, like dabr.co.uk, official Twitter site was banned this afternoon.”
In fact it’s so smart and lightweight, I reckon you could probably host Dabr from a Nokia running a web server.
Nice work David!