Weibo

Source :China Times30 April 2012

Wang reported [Reporter Lu Sumei / roundup]

Sina weibo, China’s domestic twitter which has 300 million users, may under the threat of shutting down. According to Sina’s 2011 Annual report submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on 28 April, "the authorities required our users to use real name for authentication.. But for varies reasons we are unable to complete the task. We may face severe punishment by the Chinese government, including partial suspension of the microblogging’s function or even shutting it down." Sina reminded investors that if it was punished by the Chinese government, it might affect the company's share price.

According to the implementation of the “Beijing shi wei bo fazhan guanli you guan gui ding (Regulation on mirco-blogging in Beijing)” , the real-name authentication will be executed by the four popular microblogs in China from March 16. Theese include Sina (weibo.com), Sohu (t.sohu.com), Netease (t.163.com) and Tencent weibo (t.qq.com). Although this regulation claims to be “voluntary”, old users without real-name authentication are unable to post and forward messages anymore. They can only browse contents on the blog.

Written by: Mainland Blogger Jason Ng
Translated by: Michelle Fong

Editor notes: This article was first published in Simplified Chinese by a Mainland Blogger about Ten things impressed him the most about Weibo.com (新浪微博，Sina mircoblog , akin hybrid of Twitter and Facebook and being the most popular site in China.) which is the most popular microblog in China.