Slashdot Mirror
Where China's Weibo Beats Facebook and Twitter
HansonMB writes with this excerpt: "Launched in 2009, the micro-blogging service is owned by Chinese interweb behemoth Sina Corp, which happens to be the same company that partnered with Google before their deals famously floundered (cf those anxieties) and Google hightailed out of China (before coming back of course). Weibo is often described as a Facebook-Twitter hybrid, but anyone who takes a closer look can easily see that it's a different beast entirely. Actually, I would argue Weibo is better than both. Here's a breakdown of its standout features—some of which Google Plus has already included, and others that I'd love to see incorporated soon."
It tells what I think and writes messages for me! Praise our glorious leader.
Actually, I would argue Weibo is better than both.
Well, if you want to do that effectively, might I suggest actually drawing the comparisons?
Instead of having to post shortened links that direct traffic to an external site, multimedia content is integrated directly into the website’s interface, so that no one ever has to leave the Weibo ecosystem.
Facebook has done this forever with thumbnails and it even loads in a flash player if I link to something on Bandcamp (not sure about other sites). If Wiebo doesn't redirect you an external site, how does it deal with copyright issues? Twitter will soon support images on tweets if it doesn't already for you.
One of those Loyalty / Rewards Systems
Not for me, thanks.
Think of it as social networking plus Pokemon. Sounds awesome to me.
Well, enjoy it man. I am part of a large section of the population of the United States of America that does not find Pokemon cute or entertaining. Sounds like hell to me.
Logging into Weibo takes users to "Weibo Square," a portal filled with endless possible detours, including the hot topics of the day, most popular tweets, and highlighted celebrity users.
Yeah, MySpace had this. It still does now that it's been sold to a marketing firm. And that's where it belongs. Social Networking is about the users. You should spend time at someone's page and trends should be a sidebar. When I see this all I can think of is Supermarket tabloid. Again, not for me.
Okay, this section should technically be labeled “e-commerce,” but I got too excited over the prospect of being able to order food online through a social networking site.
So one of your selling points is that on a massive social network, companies market and sell shit to you. No thanks man. I don't think you understand what "social networking" means to me. Users are the center of attention, not food or ecommerce. If you want to add those Apps and APIs and they start to get intrusive to the core experience, you're going to lose users. You can keep Weibo.
If you call that a conclusive "better than Facebook and Twitter" discussion, you need to work on your sales pitch, shill.
My work here is dung.
When a ship sinks, it founders. Please.
And that's about where I stopped reading. I have automatic distrust of any social media company and the Chinese government, so why would I join one from China?
Yeah, that's something I'm super-eager to do. I think I'll follow it up by emailing my social security number and credit card data to random .ru domains immediately after.
It can identify political dissidents 5x faster
Seems like a great one-site-fits-all-needs service. So convenient for the user and those monitoring/policing the user's behaviors, interests and opinions; and for discovering individuals who may be like minded.
Honestly, it looks awful, it doesn't look like a social networking website, it looks more as a commercial Internet portal, the kind that were around over 10 years ago. I already have a lot of troubles trusting some of my personal information to US based Internet services, I can't see why in the world I would trust it to a Chinese based one. Is there really nothing better to post in Slashdot today?, Lately all news appear to be about social networks, the cloud, or bitcoin, and not just in Slashdot.
Was I offline that week? When did this happen?
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
Does anyone else think this article reads like it was written by an idiotic teenage girl?
Ok (yeah, a reply to myself), it was an exaggeration to claim that all news are about this, and this doesn't have an undo button. But I stand behind my assertion that this was not Slashdot material and that the site looks awful.
Mod up parent, couldn't have said it better. Then again, this is China where having a smart phone means you're rich. They haven't gone through their MySpace phase. It's like when I went to Japan over a decade and a half ago and saw Doragon Bru (had to look that up to remember). All I could think was, oh for crying out loud, we're still stuck on freaking Power Rangers. I told a friend there that we'll enjoy it in America too years after I'd returned. That's where China is, round about 2004-2005.
I8-D
It's like Facebook, except with more intrusive advertising and several of the annoyances that killed Myspace. Most importantly, though, the site is run by the freedom-destroying Chinese government. Why in the hell would you want to share anything at all with China, unless forced to by the barrel of a gun?
Ugh. That UI is ghastly! I didn't think anything could be uglier and more cluttered than MySpace. I was wrong.
It would make more sense if it were a Japan social network site filled with western-based basement dwellers obsessing with their everbuilding animelists and DCCs of unfaithful unauthorized fansubs... oh what the hell i'll give in
WEEABOO! WEEABOO! WEEABOO!
he didnt type it on porpoise
trust(china + social networking site) = floor(trust(china),trust(social networking site))
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
For non-Chinese speaker: Wei = Micro, Bo = Blogging. Just sayin'.
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
There are several services that have this limit that is a holdover from the days of when most people had dumb phones. Twitter has this, plurk also has this, as does weibo. In Chinese it turns out you can say A LOT in 140 chars so this limit isn't as big a deal I guess, plurk is popular in Taiwan and is really similar. I mostly just peruse social networks and rarely post things myself.
The PRC is not quite to the stage where the concept 'rule of law' has supplanted 'rule of men', and PATRIOT Act-related BS that the likes of AT&T get into in the US is par for the course. Sina is listed on NASDAQ, but home plate and most of their action is back in Shanghai, as are the major shareholders. http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/insider/InsiderRoster.jsp?tkr=SINA
Luke, help me take this mask off
Nobody in china praises the dear leaders. Even state media has toned it to almost nonexistence.
Compare that to USA, where Obama worshiping is at an embarrassing and disgusting level.
At least no Chinese said the leader makes his legs tingling.
I signed up for Weibo last week, having lived in China for 6 years. After the signup process I decided never to use it as it was obviously insecure. During the signup/login you are asked, as usual, to create a username and password. I usually use some nice secure passwords, ten or more letters with caps, numbers and punctuation. However, Weibo popped up a error message saying that I must only use lower-case letters a-z. This massively reduces the number of password combinations.
and kip adotta made me do it
The summary feels like an indigenous to Sina shill, bashing Google in the process. Hightailed? Ran came back? Left the PRC went to HK's Two System's One Nation: anyone, anyone? "Those dumb Americans wont know that, dew neh!" Indeed.