Vietnam's social networking

What is social networking?

  The interaction between a group of people who share a common interest; Using social contacts to network; Using internet's network groups (such as Facebook and Twitter) to network and communicate between individuals and sometimes even consumers and businesses

      Vietnam has actually launched their own social networking site called go.vn. Vietnam's government was in fear of Facebook because they could not control it. In order to sign up though users have to submit their full name and government issued identification numbers. The government is even trying to involve the kids by creating appropriate online games and online English tests. Authoritarian governments such as Vietnam are seeking to control what is spread over the internet now, rather than always blocking other social networking sites. 

The government in Vietnam has tried to ban Facebook, but it is still very accessible. 

In the "Global Post" Helen Clark told us why the ban didn't exactly work. 

Unlike China, which blocks websites at an ISP level, Vietnam does so at the DNS level. What this means, as one IT expert explained, is that the government simply tells service providers to redirect their servers away from sites as opposed to actually blocking their access. The upshot is that it's easier to circumnavigate Vietnam's firewall than it is China's, where an estimated 30,000 censors search for illicit content on the internet.

“This is trivially easy to circumvent,” said the IT expert, who wished to remain anonymous. “All you need do is change your DNS provider to one of the publicly available ones. Google DNS is a great example.”

The ease of the work around and no official mention of sanctions mean Facebook users, which number over a million in Vietnam, can plead innocence. Users chat online, tag photos and play Farm Ville.

http://www.rferl.org/content/Fearing_Facebook_Vietnam_Launches_Its_Own_SocialNetworking_Site_/2177003.html