Weibo (officially Sina Weibo) is a popular, self-censoring Chinese micro-blogging website. Established by the Sina Corporation in 2009, in operation, Weibo functions essentially like the Twitter platform. Users are limited to posting 140-character status updates. They may also share photos, videos, or audio clips along with these updates. Posts may be "forwarded", the equivalent of Twitter's "retweeting".
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Background and Popularity
The name, Weibo, derives from the Chinese portmanteau for "microblogging". Weibo censors certain keywords that its developers deem sensitive or rumorous. The developers are constantly sharpening Weibo's governing mechanisms in order to squash rumors through a variety of channels, which is why it is endorsed by the Chinese government. Currently, the site has has over 100 millions users. and Weibo plans to launch an English version of the site by the end of this year.
Twitter plans on releasing a Chinese version of the site for a second time and hopes that it will be competitive with Weibo. However, but it is not expected to succeed due to the complexity of China's censorship laws. Also, even before the Chinese government decided to block Twitter the first time, on June 2, 2009 it was not very popular.
New Uses of Weibo
Recently, many celebrities and famous individuals have recognized the social power of Weibo. For example, Coco Rocha is a famous high fashion model who signed up for a Weibo account. In a little over two months, Rocha has 100,000 "friends" or followers. [1]
Many individuals and companies are now realizing how lucrative the Chinese Market can be for their products and brand images. As a result, many are signing up for Weibo as a way to reach out to their Chinese consumers, fans and supporters.
Ethical Implications
One reason why Weibo is so popular in China is because it is supported by the Chinese government. Its government has direct control over its content, unlike other social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter that have servers located across the world. The fact that Weibo has the Chinese government overseeing its content leads to the debates in censorship, particularly whether such censoring of user-generated content is morally and ethically correct. There is no right to free speech on this site, which is particularly concerning since you don't really have to ever leave it to get the content you want - micro-blogging, videos, commerce, games, and viewing other online content without ever leaving the site.
See Also
References
- "The train crash heard around the world" aljazeera.com. Retrieved 2011-11-03.
- "China Censors Occupy Movement" blogs.law.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2011-11-03.
- "5 Facts You Must Know Before Talking About Sina Weibo and Twitter" technode.com. Retrieved 2011-12-13.
- "List of websites blocked in the People's Republic of China" Wikipedia.com. Retrieved 2011-12-13.
- "China's Sina to step-up censorship of Weibo" in.reuters.com. Retrieved 2011-12-13.
