A Free Twitter Has Lost In China To A Booming, Censored Weibo

Twitter is now offering its web interface in Simplified Chinese. But a two-year-old block on Twitter setting being accessible in China has allowed Sina’s homegrown Weibo to flourish - and now it’s already blossoming in to far more than a Twitter-style microblogging tool.

A redesign being rolled out by Weibo includes chat, apps, featured content and a virtual currency. “I don't think it makes much sense to compare it with Twitter anymore - Weibo is evolving in to a social network,” writes TechNode’s Gang Lu. The microblog craze is now sweeping China, letting citizens openly share and shine light on government malpractice, just as when citizens recently criticized authorities’ response to a recent tragic train crash. As this happens, Weibo, too, is facing its own government pressure to censor. This new interventionism, in which Weibo is having to contort itself to work within government rules, appears to give carte blanche to censorship. When the first news breaks of, for example, a train crash or a village being flooded by dam water, how is Weibo to differentiate the fact from “rumour”, as China’s government might like such reports to be categorized?