Microblogging in China

Weibo
Chinese	微博
Literal meaning	Microblog(ging)
Transcriptions Mandarin - Hanyu Pinyin Wēibó - Tongyong Pinyin Wēibó - Wade–Giles Wei-Po - Bopomofo ㄨㄟ˙ㄅㄛ˙ Cantonese (Yue) - Jyutping Mei4 Bok3 - Yale Romanization Mèih Bok
Full name
Chinese	微博客 or 微型博客
Transcriptions Mandarin - Hanyu Pinyin Wēi bókè or Wēixíng bókè
Homonymie
Traditional Chinese	圍脖
Simplified Chinese	围脖
Literal meaning	Scarf around the neck
Transcriptions Mandarin - Hanyu Pinyin Wéibó

Weibo (微博) is the Chinese word for "microblog(ging)". It usually refers to one or all of the China-based microblogging services, or one's account at these services.

Terms

"Wei boke" (微博客) and "weixing boke" (微型博客), commonly abbreviated as "weibo" (微博), are the Chinese words for "microblog(ging)". A China-based microblogging service is often named "XX Weibo".

Among the weibo services, Sina Weibo is the most visited one and follow by Tencent Weibo in second.. Sina has used the domain name weibo.com for the service since April 2011. Sometimes, the own published news of Sina.com and some other media use directly "Weibo" to refer to Sina Weibo. However generally, when mentioning "Weibo", it may refer to one or all of the China-based microblogging services.

A homonymie "围脖" (pinyin: Wéibó; literally "scarf around the neck") is used as an Internet slang for "weibo".

History

Fanfou (饭否) is the earliest notable weibo service. Launched in Beijing on May 12, 2007 by co-founder of Xiaonei (now Renren) Wang Xing (王兴), the website's layout, usage, API was highly similar to Twitter, which was created earlier in 2006. Fanfou's users increased from 0.3 million to 1 million in the first half of 2009. The users included HP China, Southern Weekly, artist Ai Weiwei, writer Lian Yue (连岳) and TV commentator Liang Wendao (梁文道).^[1]

Some other weibo services, such as Jiwai, Digu, Zuosa and Tencent's Taotao was launched in 2006-2009.^[2]

After the July 2009 Urumqi riots, China shut down most of the domestic weibo services including Fanfou and Jiwai. Many popular non China-based microblogging services like Twitter, Facebook and Plurk have been blocked since then. It was considered to be an opportunity to Sina's CEO Charles Chao.^[3][4]

Sina launched Sina Weibo on August 14, 2009. Its executives invited and persuaded many Chinese celebrities to join the platform, leading to a nice growth in user numbers.^[3][4]

Two other Chinese Internet portals, Sohu and NetEase, launched the closed beta versions of their weibo sites almost simultaneously, on January 20, 2010. On January 30, another Internet portal Tencent closed its weibo service Taotao and, started its new weibo service Tencent Weibo on March 5, 2010. Based on the large number of its instant messaging service QQ's users, Tencent Weibo later attracted more registered users than Sohu Weibo and NetEase Weibo.^[2] The public beta versions of NetEase Weibo and Sohu Weibo were launched on March 20 and April 7, 2010, respectively.^[5][6]

All these weibos provided by the Chinese Internet giants used subdomain "t.xxxx.com", as t.sina.com.cn for Sina Weibo, t.qq.com for Tencent Weibo, t.sohu.com for Sohu Weibo, t.163.com for NetEase Weibo. On 7 April 2011, the leader of the weibo services Sina Weibo started to use an independent domain name weibo.com acquired earlier, attempting to build up its own brand.

Sohu Weibo and NetEase Weibo was suspended during July 9-12 and July 13-15 2010, respectively.^[7] Since then, all of the Chinese weibo services have attached a note of "beta version" to their title logos. Professionals said that Sohu Weibo and NetEase Weibo was being "reorganized" by Chinese administrators, the weibo services were not officially approved, they could only be operated as a "beta version".^[8]

Some closed weibos was re-opened under restrictions in 2009 or 2010, including Fanfou, re-launched in November 2010. Most of Fanfou's users never came back.

Users

Before July 2009, Fanfou is the most influential weibo website. Sina Weibo has been the leader of weibos since the second half of 2009.

In February 2011 Tencent announced that its weibo's registered users surpassed 100 million.^[2] This threshold was officially said to be passed by Sina Weibo in March 2011.^[9] However according to iResearch's report on March 30, 2011, Sina Weibo took a commanding lead with 56.5% of China's microblogging market based on active users and 86.6% based on browsing time over its competitors.^[10]

According to China Internet Network Information Center, in the first half of 2011, Chinese weibo/microblog users increased from 63.11 million to 195 million. By July 2011, 40.2% Chinese Internet users and 34.0% Chinese mobile Internet users used weibo/microblog, in Dec 2010 it was respectively 13.8% and 15.5%.^{[11][Note 1]}

Censorship & free speech

In July 2009, Chinese weibos were highly damaged when most of the domestic weibos such as Fanfou were shut down, but it brought the birth of other weibos like Sina Weibo operated by large Chinese Internet companies.^[3][4] These large weibo services are also under the government's control. Sohu Weibo and NetEase Weibo was suspended in July 2010 per demand of the Chinese administrators.^[7] All the weibos can only be operated as a "beta version" to somehow avoid the Chinese administrators' prohibition.^[8]

Due to the Internet censorship in China, all of the China-based weibo services today is now controled by various self-censorship policies and methods.^[12][13] They usually have blacklisted keywords list to be automatically checked,^[14] sometimes administrators check manually. Posts on sensitive topics forbidden in China (e.g. Human right, Liu Xiaobo) will be deleted and the user's account may be blocked.^[15][16]

However, compared to other Chinese media formats, weibo services are considered freer.^[3] Weibos are thought as influencial tools that impact and change China. Some scandals and controversies such as Li Gang incident are made known to the public through weibos.^[2] After incidents like Wenzhou train collision and 2010 Shanghai fire, criticism against the Chinese government is more widespread on weibos.^[17]

While weibo services might not be in favor of government officials, many Chinese officials opened weibo accounts.^[18] Organ of the Central Committee People's Daily also launched its own weibo People's Weibo (人民微博) in February 2010, with some governmental organizations and officials blogging on it. Chinese leader Hu Jintao has an official account at People's Weibo without any post.^[19]

List

Below it is a list of notable China-based microblogging (weibo) services:

• Baidu Talk (百度说吧), launched by Baidu, closed
• Digu (嘀咕)
• Fanfou (饭否), one of the earliest weibo services, highly similar to Twitter, closed due to Chinese cencorship, re-opened in November 2010
• Follow5
• Hexun Weibo (和讯微博), launched by Hexun
• Huagu Weibo (华股街微博), launched by Huagujie
• Jiwai (叽歪)
• NetEase Weibo (网易微博), launched by NetEase
• People's Weibo (人民微博), launched by People's Daily
• Phoenix Weibo (凤凰微博), launched by Phoenix Television
• Sina Weibo (新浪微博), launched by SINA Corporation, using the domain name weibo.com, most visited weibo service
• Sohu Weibo (搜狐微博), launched by Sohu
• SwisEn (随心微博)
• Tencent Weibo (腾讯微博), launched by Tencent Holdings
• Tianya Weibo (天涯微博), launched by Tianya
• Xinhua Weibo (新华微博), launched by Xinhua News Agency
• New Cultural Weibo (新文化网微博), launched by Jilin's newspaper New Cultural
• Zuosa (做啥)

See also

• Microblogging
• Comparison of microblogging services
• Internet in the People's Republic of China

Note

1. ^ The statistical data may or may not include the mainland Chinese users that bypass the Great Firewall to use blocked microblogging services outside China.

References

1. ^ "Twitter时代：人人都可发新闻" (in Simplified Chinese). 田志凌. Southern Metropolis Daily. July 12, 2009. http://gcontent.nddaily.com/3/32/3323fe11e9595c09/Blog/198/dabe6f.html. Retrieved 26 October 2011. 
2. ^ ^{a b c d} "Special: Micro blog's macro impact". Michelle and Uking (China Daily). March 2, 2011. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-03/02/content_12099500.htm. Retrieved 26 October 2011. 
3. ^ ^{a b c d} "Charles Chao - The 2011 TIME 100". Austin Ramzy. TIME. April 21, 2011. http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2066367_2066369_2066392,00.html. Retrieved 26 October 2011. 
4. ^ ^{a b c} "Sina Weibo". Gady Epstein. Forbes Asia Magazine. March 14, 2011. http://www.forbes.com/global/2011/0314/features-charles-chao-twitter-fanfou-china-sina-weibo.html. Retrieved 26 October 2011. 
5. ^ "网易微博公测上线 更开放更去中心化" (in Simplified Chinese). NetEase Tech. March 20, 2010. http://tech.163.com/10/0320/14/627OI254000915BF.html. Retrieved 26 October 2011. 
6. ^ "搜狐微博上线" (in Simplified Chinese). cnBeta. 7 April 2010. http://www.cnbeta.com/articles/108026.htm. Retrieved 26 October 2011. 
7. ^ ^{a b} "网易微博也开始"维护" 各网站推出"测试版"" (in Simplified Chinese). 谭人玮. Southern Metropolis Daily. July 14, 2010. http://nf.nfdaily.cn/nfdsb/content/2010-07/14/content_13754608.htm. Retrieved 26 October 2011. 
8. ^ ^{a b} "网易微博突然关闭 各大微博齐变“测试版”" (in Simplified Chinese). 成都商报, ifeng. July 15, 2010. http://finance.ifeng.com/money/roll/20100715/2409372.shtml. Retrieved 26 October 2011. 
9. ^ "新浪发布2010年四季及全年财报 微博用户数过亿" (in Simplified Chinese). Sina Tech. March 2, 2011. http://tech.sina.com.cn/i/2011-03-02/06005233783.shtml. Retrieved 26 October 2011. 
10. ^ "Sina Commands 56% of China’s Microblog Market". Kyle. iResearch. March 30, 2011. http://www.resonancechina.com/2011/03/30/sina-commands-56-of-chinas-microblog-market/. Retrieved 26 October 2011. 
11. ^ "第28次中国互联网络发展状况统计报告". China Internet Network Information Center. July 2011. http://www.aliresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/CNNIC-28th.pdf. Retrieved 27 October 2011. 
12. ^ "China's Sina to step-up censorship of Weibo". Reuters. Sep 19, 2011. http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/09/19/idINIndia-59420220110919. Retrieved 18 October 2011. 
13. ^ "Beijing's Weibo Conundrum". The Wall Street Journal. Sept 21, 2011. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904106704576582263223341384.html. Retrieved 18 October 2011. 
14. ^ "新浪微博搜索禁词". China Digital Times. 7 July 2011. http://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/2011/07/%e6%96%b0%e6%b5%aa%e5%be%ae%e5%8d%9a%e6%95%8f%e6%84%9f%e8%af%8d%e6%95%b4%e7%90%86%ef%bc%9a%e6%b1%9f%e6%b3%bd%e6%b0%91%ef%bc%882011%e5%b9%b407%e6%9c%8807%e6%97%a5%ef%bc%89/. Retrieved 18 October 2011. 
15. ^ "Radiohead enters censored world of Chinese social media". Global Post. July 3, 2011. http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/radiohead-2011-china-sina-weibo-microblog-censorship. Retrieved 18 October 2011. 
16. ^ "著名艺术家艾未未挑战新浪微博的网络审查". Boxun.com. 10 March 2010. http://boxun.com/news/gb/china/2010/03/201003101526.shtml. Retrieved 26 October 2011. 
17. ^ The Wenzhou Crash and the Future of Weibo, Penn Olson - The Asian Tech Catalog, August 1, 2011
18. ^ "Weibo Microblogs – A Western format with new Chinese implications". Thinking Chinese. http://thinkingchinese.com/index.php?page_id=340. Retrieved 26 October 2011. 
19. ^ "“胡主席‘开’微博”，引发最火爆的“人民认证”！" (in Simplified Chinese). CCP News Site. Feb 22, 2010. http://news.163.com/10/0222/14/604ORATC000120GR.html. Retrieved 26 October 2011.