Twitter denies closing Greater China office but will streamline Asia Pacific operations into Singapore

In Asia Pacific the cost savings will largely be focused on moving most of the sales support and media partnership work into Singapore.

A spokesperson, said: “We are not closing our Hong Kong office. While we are transitioning our work, such as advertiser sales support and media partnerships, from Hong Kong to our Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore, our MD of Greater China, Kathy Chen, will still be based here. Greater China is an important part of our commitment and network across Asia Pacific which is one of our largest and fastest-growing regions in the world.”

As with many Western social networks, Twitter isn’t in China as a platform but has instead been using its operations there to up the amount of Chinese content and relevance for Chinese people using the platform that live outside of China.

A Twitter spokesperson said that it wouldn’t mean a retraction from the Greater China region: “We have a growing business of connecting Chinese advertisers to the global Twitter audience and have demonstrated early success in bringing more Chinese content onto Twitter for overseas Chinese Twitter users. We’re transitioning the support for our users, partners and advertisers in the Greater China market to our Asia Pacific headquarters in order to increase our business discipline and streamline our operations for long-term success.”

The Drum spoke to industry leaders this week about where Twitter went wrong with Vine, some suggested that other parts of its ecosystem, such as Periscope, were vulnerable to closure.