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To censor or to be censored, that is the question facing Wang Xing, the founder of the mainland Twitter clone, Fanfou.com.  
'Either the website censors sensitive feeds or the website will be censored - this uncomfortable but necessary decision has to be made,' he wrote. That was one of Mr Wang's final posts before censors shut down his microblogging website on July 7 following a surge of news and comments on the violence in Xinjiang. It remains closed.
The website had attracted more than 1 million users since it was founded in 2007, including government critics, bloggers and journalists. 
Their feeds brought breaking news from across the nation, much of which could not be reported within  the state media.
Prior to the Xinjiang violence, the website was ordered to suspend its service for three days during the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, with users greeted with a message saying the website was 'undergoing maintenance'. 
There are at least seven other microblogging websites in the mainland, but Fanfou was the only one  shut down this month. It had a reputation of being more liberal than its rivals, though it would suspend some feeds.
'We normally don't edit or amend feeds, although webmasters will delete illegal content that violates Chinese laws and regulations,' Mr Wang said. 'All the hottest feeds recommended on the front page are automatically selected by Fanfou - we try to keep it raw and original.'  
Microblogging is particularly difficult for censors to monitor and control because the information is instantly communicated to multiple users. 
Hundreds of Fanfou users complained on internet forums about the inconvenience of the shutdown, and some even set up a temporary Fanfou clone.
Mr Wang told the South China Morning Post he had not been told when the service would resume. 'We'll try to re-open it as soon as possible,' he said.
Fanfou first made the headlines in February when a celebrated mainland blogger, whose satirical comments on society and politics had gained a wide following, was stabbed in a Beijing bookstore. Updates of the blogger's condition were swiftly posted by his friends and gained considerable public attention.
It had become a valuable channel for mainland and overseas reporters in recent  months. Witness feeds had covered events in Xinjiang, commentary on the Tiananmen anniversary and news on Deng Yujiao , the waitress who stabbed an official to death and whose trial became a major focus of attention among  netizens.
Mr Wang said he had not expected the website to become a channel for breaking news and satirical  comments over authorities' wrongdoings. 
'In 2007, I was dreaming of a website to enhance simple but effective direct communication between people, something similar to Twitter in the United States,' said Mr Wang. 'The name Fanfou is actually from a popular Chinese greeting, 'have you eaten already', which people use to begin their conversation. This also reminded me of student life at Tsinghua University  where I would always gossip with classmates in the huge canteen.'
After graduating in 2001 with a degree in electronic engineering, Mr Wang earned a postgraduate degree at the University of Delaware  in computer science. He then set up the Facebook clone Xiaonei.com.  
'I focused on social networking websites after I returned from the United States because the burgeoning service was totally absent in China. I wasted about a year exploring business models before making Xiaonei.com, a successful student networking website, with a 10-person team in 2005.' He said microblogging remained a tiny part of the mainland's cyber world. 
To attract more users, Mr Wang said Fanfou allowed people to send status updates through mobile phones, instant messenger programs or through their blogs. 
Regular shutdowns and the choice between self-censorship and freedom of information are dilemmas facing many working on mainland internet ventures. 
To shut down a website such as Fanfou, authorities instruct its domain name server to block its IP address. Self-censorship is widespread, with the mainland subsidiaries of major search engines Google and Yahoo filtering results.
'At Fanfou, we developed our own search engine to enable people to search the matching feeds. The search engine identifies Chinese characters much better than Twitter -  that was our advantage.'
With no budget for advertising or any kind of promotion, Mr Wang said the amount of the money he received from the sale of Xiaonei.com - it was estimated at US$2 million by mainland media but he declined to confirm this - enabled his 12-person team to develop Fanfou.
'At this point, we don't have a business model to generate revenue for the microblogging service,' he said. 'I don't see it as a problem - as long as our users are growing at an exponential rate.' 
Last month, the website had lured its first commercial advertiser, the giant US computer and equipment maker Hewlett-Packard.
In 2007, I was dreaming of a website to enhance simple but  effective direct communication between people, something similar to Twitter in the US 
Wang Xing, founder of the mainland Twitter clone, Fanfou.com



Censorship issue settled as authorities silence booming mainland Twitter clone