Weibo (Chinese: 微博; pinyin: Wēibó), or Sina Weibo (Chinese: 新浪微博; pinyin: Xīnlàng Wēibó), is a Chinese microblogging (weibo) website. Launched by Sina Corporation on 14 August 2009, it is one of the biggest social media platforms in China, with over 582 million monthly active users (252 million daily active users) as of Q1 2022. The platform has been highly successful but has faced criticism for heavy censorship. Sina had gone public on the Nasdaq in 2000. In March 2014, Sina announced a spinoff of Weibo and filed an IPO under the symbol WB. Sina carved out 11% of Weibo in the IPO, with Alibaba owning 32% post-IPO. The company began trading publicly on 17 April 2014. In March 2017, Sina launched Sina Weibo International Version. In November 2018, Sina Weibo suspended its registration function for minors under the age of 14. In July 2019, Sina Weibo announced that it would launch a two-month campaign to clean up pornographic and vulgar information, named "Project Deep Blue" (蔚蓝计划). On 29 September 2020, the company announced it would go private again due to rising tensions between the US and China. == Name == "Weibo" (微博) is the Chinese word for "microblog". Sina Weibo launched its new domain name weibo.com on 7 April 2011, deactivating and redirecting from the old domain, t.sina.com.cn, to the new one. Due to its popularity, the media sometimes refers to the platform simply as "Weibo", despite the numerous other Chinese microblogging services including Tencent Weibo, Sohu Weibo, and NetEase Weibo. However, the latter three have stopped providing services. == Background == Sina Weibo is a platform based on fostering user relationships to share, disseminate, and receive information. Through the website or the mobile app, users can upload pictures and videos publicly for instant sharing, with other users being able to comment with text, pictures and videos, or use a multimedia instant messaging service. The company initially invited a large number of celebrities to join the platform at the beginning and has since invited many media personalities, government departments, businesses and non-governmental organizations to open accounts for the purpose of publishing and communicating information. To avoid the impersonation of celebrities, Sina Weibo uses verification symbols; celebrity accounts have an orange letter "V" and organizations' accounts have a blue letter "V". Sina Weibo has more than 500 million registered users; out of these, 313 million are monthly active users, 85% use the Weibo mobile app, 70% are college-aged, 50.10% are male and 49.90% are female. There are over 100 million messages posted by users each day. With more than 100 million followers, actress Xie Na holds the record for the most followers on the platform. Despite fierce competition among Chinese social media platforms, Sina Weibo remains the most popular. == History == After the July 2009 Ürümqi riots, China shut down most domestic microblogging services, including Fanfou, the very first weibo service. Many popular non-China-based microblogging services like Twitter, Facebook, and Plurk have since been blocked. Sina Corporation CEO Charles Chao considered this to be an opportunity, and on 14 August 2009, Sina launched the tested version of Sina Weibo. Basic functions including message, private message, comment and reposting were made available that September. A Sina Weibo–compatible API platform for developing third-party applications was launched on 28 July 2010. On 1 December 2010, the website experienced an outage, which administrators later said was due to the ever-increasing numbers of users and posts. Registered users surpassed 100 million in February 2011. Since 23 March 2011, t.cn has been used as Sina Weibo's official shortened URL in lieu of sinaurl.cn. On 7 April 2011, weibo.com replaced t.sina.com.cn as the new main domain name used by the website. The official logo was also updated. In June 2011, Sina announced an English-language version of Sina Weibo would be developed and launched, though content would still be governed by Chinese law. On 11 January 2013, Sina Weibo and Alibaba China (a subsidiary of Alibaba Group) signed a strategic cooperation agreement. With more and more foreign celebrities using Sina Weibo, language translation has become an urgent need for Chinese users who wish to communicate with their idols online, especially Korean. In January 2013, Sina Weibo and NetEase.com announced that they had reached a strategic cooperation agreement. When users browse foreign language content, they can now directly obtain translation results through the YouDao Dictionary. The Sina Weibo financial report in February 2013 showed that its total revenue was approximately US$66 million and that the number of registered users had exceeded the 500 million mark. In April 2013, Sina officially announced that Sina Weibo had signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Alibaba. The two sides conducted in-depth cooperation in areas such as user account interoperability, data exchange, online payment, and internet marketing. At the same time, Sina announced that Alibaba, through its wholly owned subsidiary, had purchased the preferred shares and common shares issued by Sina Weibo Company for US$586 million, which accounted for approximately 18% of Weibo's fully diluted and diluted total shares. === Ownership === On 9 April 2013, Alibaba Group announced that it would acquire 18% of Sina Weibo for US$586 million, with the option to buy up to 30% in the future. Alibaba exercised this option when Weibo was listed on the NASDAQ in April 2014. == Users == According to iResearch's report on 30 March 2011, Sina Weibo had 56.5% of China's microblogging market based on active users and 86.6% based on browsing time over competitors such as Tencent Weibo and Baidu. According to research by Sina Corporation, the number of active users reached over 400 million by Q1 2018, making Sina Weibo the 7th platform with at least 400 million active users, and daily usage increased by 21%. As of 2017, approximately 80% of its users were in their 20s and 30s. The top 100 users had over 485 million followers combined. More than 5,000 companies and 2,700 media organizations in China use Sina Weibo. The site is maintained by a growing microblogging department of 200 employees responsible for technology, design, operations, and marketing. Sina executives invited and persuaded many Chinese celebrities to join the platform. Users now include Asian celebrities, movie stars, singers, famous business and media figures, athletes, scholars, artists, organizations, religious figures, government departments, and officials from Hong Kong, Mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Macau, as well as some famous foreign individuals and organizations, including Kevin Rudd, Boris Johnson, David Cameron, Narendra Modi, Toshiba, and the Germany national football team. Sina Weibo has a verification program for known people and organizations. Once an account is verified, a verification badge is added beside the account name. == Features == Many of Sina Weibo's features resemble those of Twitter. A user may post with a 140-character limit (increased to 2,000 as of January 2016 with the exception of reposts and comments). An analysis of 29 million Weibo posts found the median length was 14 characters. Users may mention or talk to other people using "@UserName" formatting, add hashtags, follow other users to make their posts appear in one's own timeline, re-post with "//@UserName" similar to Twitter's retweet function "RT @UserName", select posts for one's favorites list, and verify the account if the user is a celebrity, brand, business or otherwise of public interest. URLs are automatically shortened using the domain name t.cn, akin to Twitter's t.co. Official and third-party applications can access Sina Weibo from other websites or platforms. Users may: Submit up to 18 images/video files in every post Send personal messages to followers Follow others and be followed Post "stories" like on Instagram React to posts using different emojis Receive monetary rewards that can be used in a digital store linked to Weibo View posts identified as "hot" or popular Display the location they post from Hashtags differ slightly between Sina Weibo and Twitter, using the double-hashtag "#HashName#" format (the lack of spacing between Chinese characters necessitates a closing tag). Users can own a hashtag by requesting hashtag monitoring; the company reviews these requests and responds within one to three days. Once a user owns a hashtag, they have access to a wide variety of functions available only to them on the condition that they remain active (less than 1 post per calendar week revokes these privileges). Additionally, comments appear as a list below each post. A commenter can also choose to re-post the comment, quoting the whole original post, to their own page. Unregistered users can only browse a few post
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