CREDIT: REUTERS/ROBERT GALBRAITH
(Reuters) – Twitter Inc plans to open an office in Hong Kong early next year to serve greater China and tap advertising revenue from Chinese companies, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The office is set to open in the first quarter of 2015 and will mainly house sales staff, Shailesh Rao, Twitter’s vice president for Asia Pacific, the Americas and emerging markets, told The Wall Street Journal.
Twitter has been blocked by Chinese censors since 2009.
Even if it does not establish an official presence in China, Twitter has avenues to make money from China. For instance, Twitter’s subsidiary MoPub, which serves up ads inside mobile apps, counts many small Chinese app developers among its customers, while Beijing-based PC-maker Lenovo Group Ltd is an advertiser on Twitter itself.
The Hong Kong office will be headed by Peter Greenberger, Twitter’s Singapore-based director of sales for emerging markets. Greenberger earlier led Twitter’s Washington, D.C. sales team focusing on political campaigns, the Journal said.