Wall Street Journal: Taiwanese President Fined for Facebook Use
Besides illustrating the quirkiness of Taiwanese election rules, the incident also accentuates the vastly different ways in which officials on either side of the Taiwan Strait think about and use social media.
Social media services are big in both places. Facebook now boasts nearly 12 million users in Taiwan (equal to roughly half of the island’s population), according to Socialbakers. Meanwhile, mainland Chinese users of Twitter-like weibo services from companies like Sina and Tencent had grown to around 250 million by the end of 2011, up from 63 million at the end of 2010, according to a survey from the government-sponsored China Internet Network Information Center.
