Social-Networking Apps Report Service Outages in China
Source: Jonathan Cheng
Popular messaging apps Line and KakaoTalk experience the first major service disruption in China after Hong Kong's biggest pro-democracy protests in years. The WSJ's Ramy Inocencio talks with Beijing reporter Paul Mozur.
A number of popular social-networking applications reported Thursday their services were impaired in mainland China, two days after a massive pro-democracy demonstration in neighboring Hong Kong.
Users of mobile messaging applications Line and KakaoTalk in mainland China have been unable to access many of the features on the popular services since Tuesday, in the first major service disruption in the country for the companies.
Yahoo Inc. YHOO -0.14% 's Flickr was also inaccessible on Thursday.
Line Corp. and Kakao Corp. said they didn't know what caused several services available on their platforms to be unavailable to users in China. In an emailed statement, a Yahoo spokeswoman said: "We are aware of reports that Flickr is blocked for users in China and our team is investigating this now."
The timing of the outage, which began on the evening of July 1 during the pro-democracy march in Hong Kong, could indicate that the Chinese government took steps to limit usage. China's government often blocks foreign websites and smartphone services during sensitive times, like the recent 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
Officials at China's State Council Information Office didn't respond to a request for comment.
A Line spokeswoman said she didn't know when the app would become available again in China. Last month, a Line executive said the Japanese company is planning to expand its presence in China because of the hundreds of millions of potential users in the market.
Sonia Im, a spokeswoman for Kakao Corp., based in Pangyo, South Korea, said that while some features of the messaging platform still worked in China, users there couldn't add new friends, use certain emoticons or check notices. Ms. Im said the company began receiving user complaints Tuesday evening, but that the stoppage affected the bulk of its Chinese users on Wednesday.
She said the company hoped to restore full functionality to its users as soon as possible, adding that she didn't know what caused the disruption in service. Kakao has about 140 million registered users, but doesn't break out its user base by country.
In China, users of Line could see that they had received a message, but couldn't access the message itself. Mobile-phone users also could download the KakaoTalk app, but couldn't register.
An application icon for Line's Internet messaging and calling service. Bloomberg News
While Line isn't widely used in China, it has proved popular with younger users, many of whom were attracted to the app because of its emoticons, which are called stickers. In Hong Kong, the app is very popular and could have easily been used to share news of the pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong across the border to China. Line said it has more than 400 million registered users, but doesn't give a breakdown for China.
On local social media, censorship of references to the Hong Kong protests has been severe, even eclipsing blockages carried out during the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, according to WeiboScope, a service provided by the University of Hong Kong that tracks censorship.
Many of Google Inc. GOOGL -0.82% 's services remain completely inaccessible in China since they were fully blocked last month in what analysts have described as an escalation of China's attempts to control the flow of information over the Internet and put restrictions on foreign companies.
Since rising to power in 2012, Chinese President Xi Jinping has taken steps to tighten government control over the Internet. Under his leadership, the government has created a new high-profile committee to increase cybersecurity, has warned Internet celebrities with large numbers of followers about spreading rumors online, and has instituted a particularly strong antipornography campaign.
Other popular messaging services, such as WhatsApp, which Facebook Inc. recently agreed to buy, and WeChat, the popular service created by Shenzhen, China-based Tencent Holdings Ltd. 0700.HK +0.32% , were working. Viber, which Japan's Rakuten Inc. agreed to acquire earlier this year, is working as usual in China, with no reports of connection problems, said a Rakuten spokeswoman.
―Juro Osawa
contributed to this article.
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