Sina Weibo

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Sina Weibo
新浪 微 博
Microblogging service
languages Chinese
operator Sina Corporation
On-line August 14, 2009 (currently online)
http://weibo.com/

Sina Weibo ( Chinese  新浪 微 博 , Pinyin Xīnlàng Wēibó ) is the name of the largest Chinese microblogging service. It was founded on August 14, 2009 by Sina Corporation , which u. a. operates the Internet portal Sina.com .

meaning

The term Wēibó 微 博 literally means microblogging in Chinese . On March 28, 2014, Sina Corporation changed the name of the website from " Sina Weibo " to " Weibo " as one of the acts in preparation for the IPO on April 17, 2014 in the United States ( NASDAQ ). This means that Weibo.com is a synonym for corresponding offers in China and accordingly stands out from the competitor Tencent ( Tencent Weibo ). According to its own account, the service had 340 million registered users in the first quarter of 2017, of which 154 million publish their own messages every day. Weibo has repeatedly been suspected of publishing results that cannot be verified. In February 2013 Tech in Asia reported 500 million Sina-Weibo users, but a study by the University of Hong Kong based on 30,000 randomly selected member profiles came to the conclusion that 57.4 percent of the user accounts viewed were empty; According to the Wall Street Journal, Sina herself stated the number of daily active users at the end of 2012 at 46.2 million.

The US-listed Chinese company increased sales by two thirds to $ 200 million in the first quarter of 2017. In the second quarter of 2017, Weibo expects revenues of $ 240 to 250 million, of which 85 percent will be from advertising. In contrast to Twitter , however, the microblogging service can refer to a quarterly profit of 46.6 million dollars, which has increased almost sevenfold in the first quarter of 2016. For the full year 2016, Weibo had reported a little more than $ 100 million in profit.

censorship

In the course of internet censorship in the People's Republic of China , Weibo.com is continuously monitored by government agencies. This is done, among other things, with the help of keyword lists that filter blocked terms. Messages containing links to short URL services and messages in Tibetan language are generally not disseminated. The censorship is to be increased in the future.

On March 9, 2010, the short messages of the Chinese activist and artist Ai Weiwei were removed and his user account deleted. Messages containing his name can no longer be created. On October 30, 2010, messages from actress Gigi Leung were deleted after writing about activist Zhao Lianhai .

On March 31, 2012, as a punitive measure for spreading rumors of an alleged coup attempt in China, the two large microblogs at sina.com and tencent.com were ordered to shut down their comment function for five days.

In May 2012, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported further restrictions and suspected that the Internet company Sina is willing to help control the network.

Compared to other media in China, Weibo.com guaranteed relatively far-reaching opportunities for expression of opinion, which largely disappeared with the tightened guidelines published in April 2018. Among other things, homosexual content has since been removed from the platform in order to ensure “harmonious coexistence”.

Functions

Weibo is a short message service that can post up to 2,000 Chinese characters plus videos and photos. Usernames are indicated by an @ . Topics are identified by so-called hashtags . The color scheme of Sina Weibo is also deliberately based on the Twitter model.

Foreigners at Weibo

In the past few years, some non-Chinese users have also established themselves on Weibo. The best-known foreigner is the Chinese-born American Mike Sui with more than one million followers (as of August 8, 2018). The best-known German-speaking user is the web video producer Thomas Derksen ( AfuThomas ) with 905,000 followers. In second place is the linguist Sven Hänke ( Deyulaoshi Sven ) with 38,000 followers.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Term Weibo - 微 博. In: dict.leo.org. Retrieved August 8, 2019 .
  2. ↑ http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ 微 博
  3. ↑ 新浪 微 博 换 标 更名 为 “微 博” - Sina Weibo changes its identifier - name change to “Weibo”. In: www.ce.cn. Retrieved August 8, 2019 (Chinese).
  4. ↑ Sina Weibo: China's Twitter clone is possibly a pseudo giant spiegel.de from March 13, 2013
  5. ↑ Thus, Weibo has more users than Twitter
  6. ↑ China's bloggers fear a new wave of censorship. In: sueddeutsche.de. October 27, 2011, accessed June 20, 2018 .
  7. ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/apr/03/ai-weiwei-detained-chinese-police
  8. ↑ Censorship Special - Tencent and Sina Weibo disable the comment function of the Chinese microblogs , doppelpod.com, accessed on March 31, 2012
  9. ↑ After rumors of a coup attempt - China restricts Internet short messages , süddeutsche.de , March 31, 2012, accessed on March 31, 2012
  10. ↑ Are these just rumors? in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of June 1, 2012, page 35
  11. ^ Adrian Rauchfleisch, Mike S. Schäfer: Multiple public spheres of Weibo: a typology of forms and potentials of online public spheres in China. In: Information, Communication & Society. 2014, pp. 1–17, doi : 10.1080 / 1369118X.2014.940364 .
  12. ↑ tagesschau.de: China's short message service Weibo bans homosexual content. Accessed April 14, 2018 (German).
  13. ↑ A brief portrait: Sina Weibo, the Chinese Twitter ( memento of April 24, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), Netzwelt, February 14, 2012.
  14. ↑ Mike Sui's account
  15. ↑ AfuThomas account
  16. ↑ Account of Deyulaoshi Sven