…by comparison, it took Twitter nearly 30 months to attract the same number of users.
China’s version of Twitter is Sina’s Weibo. Currently the leading microbloging site, Weibo is experiencing phenomenal growth since it started about 10 months ago. Weibo currently has approximately 10 million users, averaging to 1 million new users per month.
More celebrities in China are taking to microblogging to promote themselves. China Daily reports on Sina Weibo’s Top 10 celebrities. And here’s a comparison Twitter vs. Weibo: the most followed users.
Weibo has also indirectly received the official seal of approval from the Chinese government earlier this month by being mentioned in an official White Paper on the Internet -probably due to it’s strict compliance with certain dictates regarding censorship. Weibo can and will delete any comments that are politically critical of the government. A few Twitter-like services had emerged in China before Weibo. Predecessors that include Fanfou, Jiwai, Digu and Twitter were all banned in July, 2009 after ethnic unrest in Xinjiang was blamed, in part, on activists spreading their messages on the Web through Twitter.
It sounds like Weibo has a lot of great features that make it much more popular than Twitter will ever be in China. Much like Twitter in that you can post messages of 140 characters, each one is a word in Chinese so you can say much more – not to mention the fact that Chinese, by its very nature is a much more efficient language. Here are 7 other things Sina Microblog (Weibo) has that Twitter doesn’t.
If you’re really globally hip, there’s even a WordPress plugin that will Get Your Sina Weibo feed and insert it into your WordPress blog.
Ushi is China’s LinkedIn…
Shanghai-based Ushi was founded by 100 Charter Members who are successful business leaders in China, including partners of the most famous VC firms, investment banks, law firms, and accounting firms, as well as CEOs of advertising agencies, luxury brands, and leading companies in Internet, mobile, renewable energy, travel, hotel, real estate and other industries. As such, Ushi aims to be China’s top platform for business networking, featuring the highest quality community and opening up the highest quality opportunities for members.