China Blocks Foursquare; Too Many People Checking Into Tian’anmen

The Chinese censors are a sight to behold. As in how fast they react. It’s an open secret that while Twitter is probably chock-full of “the wrong people” (to the censors), the censors themselves are there, too.

Given that, well, are we surprised? China has blocked foursquare — apparently because we’ve seen too much of this…

…and because foursquare speaks to both Twitter and Facebook, some of us posted that onto — right… especially Twitter. The censors probably went, “Ah…” and boom — blocked the site outright.

Jeepers. This is the stuff that must have the censors soiling in their pants. Virtually hundreds of people checked into Tian’anmen Square, the place where “something baaad happened” 21 years ago. Of course, the square itself is “safe” (in the real world) today, with cops even in helmets, as well as SWAT forces, all reported in the vicinity of the world’s largest square.

In place of student demonstrators and their banners, we have people basically filing into foursquare and leaving “sensitive comments” as “tips”. Those checking in included folks outside Beijing; @isaac (Isaac Mao), @rejon (Jon Philips) and the rest just flocked to the square, even if they were based elsewhere. (You can do this, by the way, by going to the Foursquare mobile site or even the main site and change your location — although if you’re not actually there, that could be seen as cheating…)

Can we call this politicized cheating — or a way to remind ourselves that something baaad happened on this day?

Foursquare. Dead to China beginning in the afternoon hours of June 4, 2010. (Confirmed here in Beijing.) You’ll have to reroute to get in…

Late night update: We have updates that this is indeed a nationwide block. Here’s a list of other cities in which foursquare is invisible: Fuzhou, Guangzhou, Hangzhou (thanks, @APE_kIng @EnjoyCHH @Marvinlou @warrenLOL for the updates).

Yet another update: Good news (if there’s any) for those who did check in: you automatically got the Swarm badge and the Player Please! badge. As they say, to every cloud there’s always a silver lining…

#foursquare Day Beijing Featured In National News Mag

Will we soon see #foursquare harmonized? Travel sites have a much better track record with the Net Nanny… that is, unless you get un-harmonious with them. (How — that we don’t know.)

Anyway, #foursquare Day Beijing made it big. One of the nation’s most libre papers, the Southern Metropolitan Weekly (《南都周刊》), did its bit in letting the world — at least the Chinese-language world — know all about foursquare Day. In addition to letting your blogger claim a full page of the paper’s territory, the paper, more importantly, gave more airtime to @frankyu, mayor of the Sanlitun Apple Store, as well as other folks, including Joel Danielson of Illuminant.

(Yep — the paper also revealed that @frankyu is mayor because he checks in every single day. In fact, Frank just checked in about an hour before this post was pushed out. Ah, Frank, why don’t you just write the Great Leader Steve Jobs and — own the Store for good?)

The paper also interviewed the folks behind Fubar, where the party moved after 50+ folks checked in at the city’s Mac temple. Fubar gets its biz done through word of mouth, and — true to the #foursquare spirit — offers the mayor (currently no-one but @BeijingBoyce) happy hour prices all day.

PS: The paper got David Feng’s nationality wrong — he’s a Swiss, not a Singaporean. Beijing’s Subway Goddess, @sioksiok, by the way, is Singaporean…

PS 2: The guy you see with an index finger sticking out is pointing at the swarm by the Apple Store. We should have pointed that out earlier…

(Thank you @chinewinelover for the OK to use the pic.)

於 4 月 16 日舉行的 foursquare Day 線下聚會引起了媒體的關注，其中一個做大篇幅報導的就是《南都週刊》，並採訪了本博客博主、舉辦場所之「foursquare Mayor」及其它 foursquare 人物。