Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Twitter are growing in China despite a ban on them

China has put a ban on social networking sites such as Facebook Inc(NASDAQ:FB) and Twitter, yet users of the sites are growing by leaps and bounds in the country, which is the world's largest Internet market.

A survey done by London’s GlobalWebIndex said that Facebook had 63.5 million users in China in the second quarter of 2012, compared to 7.9 million in 2009.

Micro blogging site Twitter users in the country tripled to 35.5 million in the same period.

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Sites which are blocked can be accessed via proxy servers which bypass filters and can connect to the sites.

It is these workarounds which has helped Facebook and Twitter get millions of users from the country that allows only local social networking sites to function.

The survey showed that Facebook and Twitter are providing stiff competition to local services in China such as Sina Weibo.

“It only takes a little bit of desk research to discover that what is called the Great Firewall is actually much more porous than the Chinese government would like to admit,” Tom Smith, founder of GlobalWebIndex said in the blog post where the results of the survey were put up.

However compared to social networks such as Qzone which has 286.3 million users, Facebook and Twitter users are still small in the country.

Shares of FB are soaring on Friday and rose 7.50% after the company announced to enter into the e-commerce area with its gifting service.