Twitter vs. Weibo: the most followed users

This post is based on an article I found yesterday by iReseach.cn blogger Liu Xingliang.

My English version of the top ten most-followed users of each platform:

	Twitter		Weibo
		Followers		Followers
1	Ashton Kutcher (actor)	4,715,383	Yao Chen (actress)	1,342,776
2	Britney Spears (singer)	4,651,180	Zhao Wei (actress)	1,139,814
3	Ellen DeGeneres (TV personality)	4,443,322	Li Kaifu (businessman)	919,420
4	Barack Obama (politician)	3,553,908	Huang Jianxiang (sport pundit)	880,493
5	Lady Gaga (singer)	3,434,718	Li Bingbing (actress)	845,086
6	Oprah Winfrey (TV personality)	3,346,574	Zhou Libo (comedian)	806,636
7	Kim Kardashian (model, etc.)	3,282,837	Pan Shiyi (businessman)	777,971
8	John Mayer (musician)	3,183,439	Chen Kun (actor)	682,914
9	Twitter (official feed)	3,072,528	Zhou Bichang (singer)	658,133
10	Ryan Seacrest (TV personality)	3,053,883	Yu Minggong (businessman)	653,558

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Liu’s observations:

1. TV/film/pop stars are the most popular users on both platforms: Twitter has eight actors, singers, etc. in its top ten; Weibo has seven.

2. Weibo is used far less as a political platform. Unlike with Twitter, says Liu, there are hardly any politicians in Weibo’s top hundred users, let along the top ten.

3. Businesspeople on Weibo are as popular as TV/film/pop stars on Weibo. In Twitter’s top ten there is not one business person; in Weibo’s there are three: former Google China boss Li Kaifu, SOHO boss Pan Shiyi, and New Oriental founder Yu Minhong. Because China’s economy is developing rapidly, says Liu, successful businesspeople are seen more like celebrities.

4. Official feeds on both platforms are very widely followed. Twitter’s official feed ranks ninth with over 3 million followers; Weibo’s official feed has over two million followers. Although this would rank it at number one, Sina have kept its official feed off the ranking.

5. Latecomers have advantages over firstmovers. Twitter, which has been running for 48 months, has a total of 36 million people following the top ten users; Weibo, which has been running for just 8 months, already has around 8.5 million people following its top ten.

Weibo is twice as generous to English writers

In an earlier post I wrote that Chinese microblogs are more generous than Twitter.

As an illustration of just how “generous”, I translated a 114-Chinese-character post on Zuosa into 430 Roman characters. Looking at this alone, it would seem microblogging in Chinese is 3-4 times more generous at conveying meaning as microblogging in English.

Sina Microblog (Weibo), however, might be seeing it slightly differently. I am not sure how long this has been the case, but while Weibo allows 140 Chinese characters in a post, you can actually enter up to 280 Roman characters. If the different character allowances are intended to give writers of English and Chinese equal opportunity to express meaning, it would suggest Sina thinks Chinese microblogging is twice as generous as microblogging in English.

7 things Sina Microblog (Weibo) has that Twitter doesn’t

Sina Microblog – better known in China as Weibo (pronounced ‘way-bore’) – is establishing itself as the leading Chinese microblog platform. According to Sina’s CEO, Weibo had more than 5 million users in early March 2010.

While Weibo is essentially the same concept as Twitter, there are a few differences: 

1) Blog-like comments. Unlike Twitter’s ‘replies’, Weibo’s comments do not appear independently in the feed; instead, they are listed under the entry, more like a traditional blog. All discussion around a single Weibo entry, therefore, can be seen easily in one place.

2) Focus on verified accounts. Although Twitter now has now brought them in, verified accounts are a much bigger deal in Weibo; they are given out far more readily, to all kinds of celebrities and brands, and a pretty “v” appears by every verified user’s Weibo entry. With 1,259,038 fans, Yao Chen, a young actress, is the most popular ‘Weiborer’:

3) The backing of a Chinese giant. Sina is better known in China for its blogging platform, which is one of the most widely read in the world. This not only connects Weibo to a huge user base and content source, years of self-censoring experience have earned Weibo acceptance from the government. For these reasons and more, Weibo is in a very strong position in China.

4) Embedded picture & video attachments. By clicking on thumbnails that can be easily added to any Weibo entry, pictures or video can be viewed without leaving the page. This is this handy for the user and provides opportunities for marketing, as brands can more easily associate visuals with entries. The following screenshots show an embedded video before it is clicked:

And after it has been clicked:

5) Stringent self-censorship. Unlike Twitter, users risk having entries deleted by Weibo,  without explanation, if they contain anything deemed politically sensitive.

6) A comprehensive portal page. Weibo’s portal page features far more than Twitter’s, with extensive lists including rankings for individual entry, topic, and user popularity.

7) An ‘eager’ automatic URL shortener. Enter any ‘http://…’ address — regardless of length — and it will be shortened to something like http://sinaurl.cn/kljlkj. While often handy, this will frustrate anyone that needs to make it clear to users exactly what link they’re following.

For more detail, read an article by Sinobytes; for context, read a ‘Chinese Microblog Roundup’ by East-West-Connect; and for more Webb in China stuff on Weibo, click here.

Basketball star Marbury microblogs in China

Where do you go to escape negative social media attention? Well, you could try one place that Twitter and Facebook will struggle to find you: China.

Some might think that is exactly what NBA “problem child” Stephon Marbury did when he moved to China a couple of weeks ago to play for Shanxi Zhongyu.

Marbury seems to have completely moved his social media presence. He posted his last Twitter entry on January 26, having already made his first entry a day earlier on the equivalent Chinese site. Marbury, the biggest NBA star ever to have played professional basketball in China, already has 26,132 fans on the Chinese Twitter-like Sina Microblog.

Of course, Marbury hopes to do more than escape twitterers; he is partly here to promote his clothing and apparel brand, Starbury. His posts frequently link to his Taobao store, where a pair of low-cost Starbury basketball shoes retail for around RMB 150-200 (USD 20-30).

I think this could become one of the best marketing uses so far of a Chinese microblog site, perfectly combining personal branding and product promotion.

Marbury is already creating a genuine dialogue with his fans. Earlier this week, for example, he engaged in a mammoth microblog Q&A, directly answering huge amounts of questions from fans.

Of course, challenges remain. He is only able to speak to his online fans in English, and his off-court brand will largely depend on his on-court success. Last week, Shanxi Zhongyu lost their first game with their new star.

Stingy characters – are Chinese microblogs more generous than Twitter?

Chinese microblog platforms have one major thing in common with Twitter, they limit updates to 140 characters. However, since a Chinese character generally conveys much more meaning than a single letter of the Roman alphabet, a Chinese microblog update can say a lot more than one in English.

As a very rough guide, four Chinese characters (新浪微博) are used to describe one of China’s leading microblog platforms, while fourteen characters are needed to write its English translation, Sina Microblog.

Similarly, 推特 – the Chinese for Twitter, does in two characters what English does in seven.

In addition, Chinese sentences do not need any spaces to make sense, even after punctuation marks.

Admittedly, posts on Chinese microblogs are often a mixture of English words and Chinese; and the online cultures of China and the English-language speaking world abbreviate in different ways.

However, despite these qualifying factors, by offering the same 140-character limit, microblogs are being much less stingy to Chinese writers than people updating in English.

So, a company or an individual can say a lot more. And quite often, they do just that. First, look at this fairly typical Twitter update from microblog aficionados, Dell (@DellOutlet):

Below is another update, also from Dell (@delldirect), on Chinese “twitter-like” site, Zuosa.com:

In just 114 characters, this Dell microblogger had managed to say the following:

Dell’s National Day Sale will run from Sept 11 to Oct 8. To celebrate the 60^th anniversary w. the motherland, Dell Home Computers is offering 6 cool gifts & deals on 10 computer models. These exciting offers will run non-stop for 4 weeks. Also, get a free upgrade to color casing & a 512MB independent graphics card, as well as other service upgrades. All offers are on a first-come-first-serve basis. What R U waiting 4? Act now!

It doesn’t look so “micro” now, does it? By using only part of their allowance, Dell managed to say the equivalent of 430 English-language characters.

When it comes to microblogs, I am less likely to read long updates; fat blocks of characters – English or Chinese – put me off.

Of course, not everyone is as lazy as me. However, companies should think about whether they should take advantage of these slightly less “micro” opportunities by writing longer updates. Personally, I think they shouldn’t. In this case, less is definitely more.

China’s first government microblog feed

On November 21, the southwestern province of Yunnan launched China’s first official government microblog feed.

Social media in China: Sina Twitter & Douban

Originally posted on The Peking Order.

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Due to the “technical difficulties” of living in China, The Peking Order has not been updated for quite some time. Apologies for that, it should be OK for a while now.

In the meantime, a combination of boredom, frustration and professional interest has driven me to Chinese social media equivalents of foreign sites that are inaccessible within China. The two that I have found most interesting so far are Sina Twitter and Douban.

1. Sina Twitter (Chinese: 新浪微博; Xīnlàng wēibó)

Following a purge of Chinese “Twitter clones” that took place earlier this year, Chinese internet giant Sina has recently brought out its very own micro-blogging service, Sina Twitter.

Although no official English name is clearly displayed on the site itself, in the official bilingual email that invites users to the site, the site is referred to as “Sina Twitter”. The Chinese name translates directly as “Sina Microblog” (Perhaps Biz Stone et al. would be happier with that translation?!).

Sina’s Twitter is very similar Twitter’s Twitter. Apart from the fact that you don’t need a VPN to access it in China and that functions have been given Chinese names, there are a few notable differences.

At the moment, there seems to be no desktop app like Tweetdeck or Twhirl that can be used with Sina Twitter. “Tweets” must be made either at the website or via text message, which is free of charge for China Mobile and China Unicom users.

The other main difference I have noticed is the amount of celebrities that already use this site. Most famous users are film or pop stars, but currently with the most number of followers (51,193 at the time of writing) is Lee Kai-fu, the former head of Google China.

Identical to Twitter, each post must be no longer than 140 characters. However, since a single Chinese character can represent entire words or concepts, a single tweet can convey far more than an English-language Twitter post.

For more detail, read Steven Milward’s report on CNet.

To keep up-to-date on what I am doing, follow my very own Sina Twitter feed at http://t.sina.com.cn/angryeditor.

Please note: Still in the beta phase, Sina Twitter can only be used on an invite-only basis. For an invite, please let me know in the comments below.

2. Douban.com (Chinese: 豆瓣; Dòubàn)

Established in 2005, Douban is social network that, in some ways, is identical to Facebook: Users maintain a profile with basic information, add friends and post messages on the profile pages of other users.

Douban distinguishes itself from Facebook by focusing more on users’ interests, with discussion groups and fan pages of bands, brand names and celebrities etc. On their personal pages, users can list books they have read, the music they have listened to and the films they have watched. Based on these interactions, people add can friends based on common interests. Unlike Facebook, therefore, a large amount of a user’s friends are often people that they do not necessarily have a “real-world” relationship with.

According to an article on Danwei.org, which includes an interview with the founder, the website has dominated the online cultural scene for the last four years.”

And according to a Chinese friend, Douban is predominantly used by 文青. She describes this group as “hipsters”, or “young people interested in cultural phenomena”. I would go for something like “young, educated, artsy types”.

My Douban profile can be found at: http://www.douban.com/people/11610289/.