Tech Blog 3: Sina Weibo
The social media platform I choose to analyze this time is the Sina Weibo, a Chinese mircro-blogging website. Although it may not be familiar to most people outside China, it is playing a really essential role in around 400 million Chinese people’s daily life as well as a significant status in the global social media field. Launched in 2009 as a simple platform and after 10 years, surpassed U.S. 30 billion dollars market valuation mark, Sina Weibo has gradually been raising its reputation internationally. Sina Weibo is currently the Top 3 popular social media platform in China but it is not simply famous for this ranking alone. Instead, the functions and new-tech media works it provides are the reason why more and more people choose to use it.
Since “Twitter and Facebook are blocked in China,” Weibo basically take over most of their media functions to make Chinese social network diverse. (Millward, 2017) With a focus on people of all age groups, including business owners and celebrities, Weibo has a particularly significant consumer market and social influence. Its main function is “micro-blogging” enabling people to post short articles in 140 text words as well as videos, pictures and vlogs. Similar to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, users can choose to follow other celebrities, brands, or stars due to their preference and get notification on these people’s new posts. From large business owners to You-tubers or movie stars, almost all famous people has their official account on Weibo. Similarly, Sina Weibo also promotes “personalized recommendation” to users based on their daily social routine or blog preferences with the help of “big data collection.” Another new function being promoted these years is the online streaming boom including “Live Stories,” and thus “seeing a boom in users making their own live streaming video on the social network.” (Millward, 2016)
However, Sina Weibo is still outstanding for few of its unique tech and strategy. On the one hand, Weibo is helping people get to know real time “big events” rankings happening in China based on journalism news collection. This system acquiring for news events is being updated every minute and second. It is really easy for people to reach this “search engine” embedded in Weibo as it is the same searching place people look for other friends. This news-related events updating function has currently become the biggest reason for people to use Sina Weibo other than simple posting stuffs. It is surprising that nowadays in China, the first thing people think of checking news is to open the Weibo app instead of searching online.
On the other hand, Weibo has its unique way enlarging its social network. As an illustration, Weibo is making connection much easier. Early in 2013, Sina Weibo has opened up its Facebook-related login account for people outside of China. (Millward 2013) Currently, it has nearly related people’s login account to all possible social network for people to easily find friends. With a really large customer basis, such promotion way can quickly enlarge its consumers’ amount through day-to-day routine. Moreover, Weibo is also famous for its offline consumer events. It is regularly holding large events for Weibo users to attend and invites the web celebrities on Weibo to be guests. All online events, polls and activities can be related to a offline network in the Weibo strategy.
The only limitation currently for Weibo is the limited user market being inside the Chinese social network. Although most of the functions and activities have been reached, people outside China still feel hard to get into this social network comparing to other media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. The future development for Weibo would probably be focusing on adding more functions and convenience to its consumer market, such as money-payment, chatting room establishment, etc. It may be still a long way to go for Weibo to authentically own its “Global User Basis” one day. But clearly, Weibo would probably be the most successful social media in China in the near future.
Work Cited
- Douglas C. Loverlace, JR. (2013). The Rise of China. Terrorism Commentary on Security Document. Oxford University Press.Paper presented at the 244-490. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?id=67mYCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA270&lpg=PA270&dq=weibo+technology&source=bl&ots=QNQYPJLGQe&sig=ACfU3U2Et7vNY0ZQ3NXTvJfHSO3zC_fJPQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiQ_dft14_hAhVNmlkKHao3A5w4ChDoATAHegQICRAB#v=onepage&q=weibo%20technology&f=false
- Millard, Steven, Sina Weibo Targets New Users Outside China, Now Lets You Sign Up Via Facebook. Tech in Asia. Social Media News. July 24, 2013, from https://www.techinasia.com/sina-weibo-facebook-login
- Millard, Steven, Weibo now has more users than Twitter.Tech in Asia. Social Media News. May 17, 2017, from https://www.techinasia.com/weibo-more-users-than-twitter
- Millard, Steven, China’s answer to Twitter sees a live streaming boom. Tech in Asia. Social Media News. Aug 9, 2016, from https://www.techinasia.com/weibo-live-streaming-china