Pouring $586 million in Sina Weibo gives Alibaba Group several perks, including an inroad into social media and access to the microblogging platform’s data. Not only that, but its new 18 percent stake in Sina Weibo may also give Alibaba Group a leg-up as it seeks to promote its own smartphone operating system Alibaba Mobile OS (AMOS) as a rival to Android. As the Wall Street Journal writes… → Read More
Known as the Twitter of China, Sina Weibo is also infamous in the West for the number of high profile users who have had tweets censored, including Kai-fu Lee. The former head of Google China, who was once booted off Sina and Tencent Weibo for three days, recently made a graph of how often his microblogging posts have been censored. Computer scientists Jed Crandall and Dan Wallach conducted a… → Read More
Kaifu Lee, former head of Google China and founder of Bejing-based startup incubator Innovation Works, said on Twitter yesterday (h/t Sinocism) that he has been banned from posting on Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo for three days. → Read More
Sina Weibo, the Chinese microblogging platform sometimes referred to as “China’s Twitter,” is finally offering an English-language interface, as confirmed to Tech In Asia by the company. → Read More
The last week has been a troubling one for observers of Internet censorship in China, and things just got worse as several bloggers and activists had their Sina Weibo accounts shut down over the past few days, the Washington Post reports.
The account closures come one week after the Chinese government passed a law requiring people to use their real names when signing up for Internet and phone… → Read More
China-based tech blog 36kr has published a company-wide email (link via Google Translate) from Sina CEO Charles Chao that previews the China-based Internet giant’s 2013 strategy. Chao wrote that Sina will reboot its strategy next year by splitting its business structure into two parts, with one focusing on its Web portal and the other on Sina Weibo, its massively popular microblogging service… → Read More
Chinese economics magazine Caijing reported today (link via Google Translate) that the National People’s Congress is considering a new law that would require Internet users who wish to register for services to use their real names. While the Chinese government says the legislation will “safeguard” Internet users from defamation, fraud and identity theft, service providers and many netizens have… → Read More
Looks like The New York Times’ groundbreaking, paywalled deal with Flipboard was yesterday’s news: today comes another development for the Grey Lady and how she is working hard to leverage social media for the next stage of growth. The New York times appears to be preparing for a launch of a NY Times China website tomorrow, and in the lead-up to that it has created its own account on Sina Weibo… → Read More
Twenty years ago, Zhongguancun was but farming fields and small houses, far from the city center of Beijing. The ‘cun’ at the end of Zhongguancun literally means ‘village’. As with much else in China, the change has come lightening fast.
Today, Zhongguancun is China’s closest equivalent to Silicon Valley. It’s host to electronics super malls, research centers, publicly-listed tech giants, and… → Read More
In the West, the battle for the social graph is over for now. Facebook is the undisputed champion. All my Western friends use Facebook, and many are addicted.
“If Facebook is the world’s social graph, then QQ (Tencent’s instant messenger) is China’s social graph,” says Hong Bo (a.k.a Keso), China’s most famous tech blogger. In China, Tencent is the longstanding champ, but its title is being… → Read More
China currently has the most Internet users of any country in the world, with some 420 million people connecting to the Web. Some more recent statistics even put that number as high as 485 million. Granted, China has a population of just over 1.3 billion, which means only 32 percent of its population is using the Web, a percentage far lower than the U.S. and Japan (at at 77 percent and 78 percent… → Read More
Facebook is the largest social networking site in, well, the world. But not in China. Facebook and Twitter are blocked by China’s Great Firewall. The micro-blogging service Sina Weibo is the whip in China. HTC knows its market and therefore slightly retooled the Status/Salsa for the China market. Gone is the Facebook logo and a Weibo burning eye logo is on the dedicated button instead. → Read More
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