What is Weibo? We explain the Chinese blog service

The veil is gradually lifting: more and more services that have long since numbered hundreds of millions of users in China are becoming known in Germany. Among the most important names is Weibo, for example. This is the Chinese version of "Twitter". The service was launched in 2009 by Sina Corporation.

Weibo has a wide reach in China and is therefore commercially interesting.

What is Weibo - and who uses it?

Weibo is a well-known name from China, although not as well-known as WeChat, the leading messenger.Unlike WeChat, however, Weibo is not a pure messenger, but a social media platform.

• It is a microblogging platform used by around 600 million people.
• This makes Weibo significantly smaller than WeChat with its 1.2 billion active accounts, but still huge by German standards.
• Weibo is particularly important in the entertainment segment: news from a wide range of categories is disseminated there, well-known actors and singers as well as athletes are active on the platform with many millions of followers.
• For this reason, Weibo is a very effective tool for marketing purposes, similar to Instagram in the West, as strong accounts can influence the target group with their opinion.

Like all Chinese services, Weibo is also subject to strong government influence. This support is driving its international expansion. Already now Weibo is not unknown in Germany, but does not play a leading role. Whether this will change in the future remains to be seen due to the fast-moving online circumstances.