In late April 2010, Aoi's Twitter account was discovered by many Chinese netizens, despite the social networking site's typically being inaccessible in China. Fans of the AV model began distributing software allowing them to bypass the censorship of Twitter. Following the 2010 Yushu earthquake in China's Qinghai Province, Sola Aoi announced that she would raise funds to donate to the earthquake victims. This was received by a mixed response by Chinese netizens, with some praising her help and others finding it unseemly. In November 2010, she opened a microblog on Sina Weibo, China's most popular domestic microblog service, posting in Japanese, English, and Chinese. In her first six hours on Sina Webo, she attracted 130,000 followers and by September 2012 that figure had risen to more than 13 million. Her sizable following in China has also led to her debut as a singer in Mandarin Chinese with the song "mao yi" (毛衣 or Sweater) which was released digitally for mobile phone and computer download.