ReadWriteWeb

It's no longer a secret that China's online gaming industry is booming, and growth is set to continue with companies such as Shanda Games, Netease and The9 leading the way. In 2009, China's online gaming industry earned nearly $4 billion, growing 39.5% from 2008.

It's been nearly a year since China first shutdown access to Twitter in preparation for the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, but today Google has opened up the doors again, in a way.

According to an article this morning in the Los Angeles Times, Google has added Twitter search results to its search engine there, "in effect, lifting a nine-month blackout of the microblogging service in China."

Returning to a lesson we recently learned from the dancing hippie, we have to wonder if today's move by GoDaddy.com, the world's largest domain name provider, means there's more trouble in store for China and western Internet companies. According to an article in today's Washington Post, the company will follow Google's lead and cease registering websites in China.

As we learned when studying the case of the dancing hippie, it's the first follower that "transforms a lone nut into a leader."

Google has just announced that it will stop censoring search results in China and will instead redirect mainland Chinese web visitors to an uncensored version of the site based in Hong Kong. China may block access to the Hong Kong site as its next move.

In announcing its decision to stop censoring search results, Google didn't argue that censorship was intolerable, but said that the situation was getting worse: a wave of hacking attacks against companies including Google, evidence that the Gmail accounts of human rights activists had been compromised and the government's shutting off access to YouTube, Blogger, Twitter and Facebook. What comes next?

Earlier tonight, the Paley Center hosted a discussion about social media and digital activism with celebrated artist, architectural designer, activist and blogger Ai Weiwei, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and ReadWriteWeb's editor and founder Richard MacManus. The discussion touched upon a large variety of topics related to social media and digital activism in China, including translating Twitter into Chinese and Google's exit from the Chinese market.

Kaiser Kuo presented today at SXSW about Google in China. He spoke about how the Google situation will impact Chinese Internet users, other companies and the Chinese government.

In the presentation, Kuo (who also spoke to ReadWriteWeb a week ago) clarified how censorship in China works. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the Great Firewall that has the most impact in China - but something China calls "self-discipline." Kuo also discussed what the next moves will be from Google, since he believes that the ball is in Google's court and Beijing won't push the situation.

Reporters Without Borders released its annual report [PDF] on online access today. They call it Enemies of the Internet, and it shows a world where online censorship, intimidation and worse is increasing.

It's not surprising that as access to the Internet expands, more and more dictators and tyrants will try to suppress it. But what's troubling about this year's report is the inclusion of two democratic countries: Australia and South Korea.

Digital activism is defined by the newly launched Meta-Activism Project as "the practice of using digital technology for political and social change." One of the leaders in the field of digital activism is Mary Joyce, the founder and executive director of the Meta-Activism Project. Joyce is among the most knowledgeable and experienced digital activists in the world.

As a lead-up to the upcoming event in New York City with Chinese digital activist Ai Weiwei, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and yours truly, I interviewed Mary Joyce about the strategies and success stories of digital activism.

The popularity of Twitter has produced a number of clones in China, just as there are Facebook clones. Some of China's Twitter clones have been closed down by the Chinese government, but some have survived. We take a look at both cases in this post. We also assess Twitter's chances of success in China, should it ever be freed from the 'Great Firewall of China.'

Fanfou, Jiwai and Digu were some of the first Twitter clones to become successful in China.

The leading social networking site in China, renren.com, started out as a blatant Facebook clone - but it now has tens of millions of users. Despite obvious similarities to Facebook, there is one significant difference from the U.S. in how Renren and other Chinese SNS are used. The bread and butter of these sites is social games using virtual items. Indeed, Farmville originated in China!

In this first post of a series, we outline the most popular social network sites in China. In follow-up posts, we'll look at Twitter clones, online video, and censorship. This series is based on a discussion I had with Kaiser Kuo, a Beijing-based expert on China's Internet.