Scandals, celebrity catfights, pictures of the naked girl in the building across, political discussions, exposing corrupt officials or the conservative alternative of simply chatting with friends; the emergence of microblogging in China has offered people a kaleidoscope of new avenues with which to entertain and express themselves.

 

With well over 140 million users today, one can legitimately scratch one’s head in incredulous awe at the fulgurous rise of the leading microblogging site in China, Sina Weibo. Its inception, only two years ago, coincided with the ban on Twitter, and numerous competitors (Sohu, QQ, i-feng, Tencent, 139, etc.) have since jumped on the microblogging-bandwagon in an attempt to emulate that success.  

But in a country where the tools of communication have been controlled and unilateral for so long, the rise of this new form of media represents much more than what Twitter may mean to the average American. In effect, it has now become the main form of expression for the Chinese people.

A tool for opinions

For over 60 years, the public agenda in China was dictated by the ruling elite and the journalists. You turned on the television and you watched. The rise of the Internet was met with the Great Firewall, and censorship became the name of the game.

With online users now posting over one million new 140 character ‘weibos’ every hour, microblogging has altered the dynamic of media communication, and the authorities are struggling to keep up.

For instance, typing in keywords such as ‘jasmine’ or ‘Egypt’ would give you this message: "According to the laws in force, the results of your search cannot be given." However, resorting to misspellings, slang, local dialects, scanning comments and saving them as a picture or clever plays on numbers and dates will bypass censors and lead you to conversations that would otherwise be banned.

So what have people been talking about? Pretty much everything: from the overtly political to the surreptitious scandals. Corruption charges, misused public funding, dubious lawsuits, foreign news, or political activists; everything is fair game in the microblogging sphere. At least until it’s taken down. But the density of information, compounded with the fast spreading nature of weibos, makes even deleting messages and conversations an arduous task, as they quickly reappear from readers who had saved the initial post.

More important than the actual content, however, is the overarching phenomenon behind microblogging. Its convenience, flexibility, and inherent freedom for people to discuss and express their feelings have taken the focus away from the dominant, non-participative media outlets and filled a social vacuum.

A tool for profit

As with any business model, enduring comes through making a profit. And microblogging in China is well on its way to doing that.

Valuations of Sina Corp’s Weibo, for instance, have gone as high up as $3 billion, which is $1.5 billion less than its American-based counterpart. Click advertising, brand advertising, and connecting online pay games will determine the income Weibo will rake in for the years to come.

A recent article on the Forbes’ online page revealed experts’ belief that Weibo can only go up from here. Profits have been slow up to now, mainly due to Sina’s decision to inject $100 million this year to promoting the Internet portal, but with the company announcing they had gained 40 million new users between February and April, and were predicting 200 million users by the end of this year, the money train is already well in motion.

How is any of this important? Well, Sina Weibo, which currently dominates 90% of the microblogging market in China, isn’t solely going to be in Chinese anymore. The company has decided to expand the portal by making it available in English in just a few months’ time.

A tool for entertainment

Microblogging offers a live, unfiltered and unfettered feed into news as it happens. In a country where corruption is rife and sex scandals abound, the effect of microblogging feels a little like wearing infrared goggles in a pitch-black, populated room, and then passing them to your buddies, who pass it on to theirs ad infinitum until finally the real lights go on.

Each week holds its share of tawdry drama, erotic scandals, bureaucratic failures, celebrities going at each other’s throats, or fun, miscellaneous stories.

Sometimes tasteless, often intrusive, they nevertheless represent a potent, and endless source of entertainment for its viewers, who for the first time can share, discuss and deride public figures (or each other) as the events unfold, with hundreds of thousands of online users.

Netizens’ attention span is getting progressively shorter: their demand for quick, easily accessible and interactive forms of amusement, combined with the nature of microblogs, where each message is as contagious as a virus, effectively create a self-feeding network.

How far can it go?

The real question now is knowing just how much change can follow from the rise of microblogging in China. Will the government figure out a way of muzzling banned topics from seeing the light in weibo form? At this point in time, only a massive crackdown on all portals would have any effect, and the chances of that happening are slim.

At the other end of the spectrum, will microblogging negate the Great Firewall by being the modern medium for free speech and expression? Only time will tell…

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Keywords: Sina Weibo microblog the effects of microblogging in China microblogging in China impact of Weibos in China