comparison between weibo and twitter

Running head: TECHNICAL ANALYSIS OF SINA WEIBO AND TWITTER

Technical Analysis of Sina Weibo and Twitter

Ge Wang

University of Southern California

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Technical Analysis of Sina Weibo and Twitter

Three years after Twitter was launched, Sina Weibo, established in China in 2009, is now

the largest microblogging service in China. It has gained more than 140 million users within two

years, while Twitter spent five years gaining 200 million (Falcon, 2013). Technically speaking,

the two most influential social platforms in the world share a lot in common and yet display their

own features that make them distinct from each other. This paper analyses the technical

similarities and differences between Sina Weibo and Twitter, which include the user interface

(the design of the platform), the content platforms (video, text, etc.), the social networking

elements (like, share, comment, chat), the analytics, curation, and algorithms.

User Interface

Speaking of user interface, Sina Weibo looks like a hybrid of a bunch of social media

platforms. First, it models the key features from Twitter, including “profile Picture”, “Following

#”, “Follower #”, “Weibo/Tweets #”, “Trends”, and “Who to follow”. Furthermore, it draws

inspirations from Facebook. The left side bar follows the basic format of “Groups” on Facebook

(see picture 1, 2, 3) yet got tweaked a little bit in some details. Picture 4 shows the drop-down

menu of “Follow” and its sub-feature “Pre-grouping” where Sina Weibo helps users categorize

their followed accounts into different topic groups such as fashion, celebrity and fitness etc.

What makes Sina Weibo’s creativity on design far outweighs Twitter’s lies in the trends

classification on the search page. Falcon posited that Sina Weibo is excelled at trends

categorization:

Weibo has a dedicated page for trends…(of) the hottest trends of last hour, or

today or even this week. Weibo is always prepared to tell you what are trends

that users really into in the specified time. Categorization is king when it comes

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to sort overloaded trends, and Weibo scored full marks on this part by categorize

all hottest trends into several categories such as general, sport, entertainment,

finance, gaming, travelling, just about everything people might be interested

about! (Falcon, 2013, paragraph 4)

Compared to Sina Weibo, Twitter’s search page “Moments” has not much to offer:

today’s topical news, sports, entertainment and fun.

Last but not least, another new feature that’s unique to Sina Weibo is its “comprehensive

product roadmap, including Gaming, E-commerce and LBS service, which leads Sina Weibo

toward a robust SNS” (Hu, 2014, paragraph 2).

The Content Platform

Sina Weibo offers various choices of content to post. In addition to text, pictures and

links, users can add emoticons, directly upload videos, write long-weibos (which is essentially a

blog in picture format without character limit), share music and files, create questions and polls,

and even launch charity events.

Users can schedule the time to post a weibo; they also have the freedom to decide who

can see their posts: to the public, to selected groups, or keep it to themselves.

Uses can add up to 9 pictures (including gif format) in a single post, and pictures can be

posted together with a video.

140 Chinese characters translate to more words than 140 English characters, which

means a lot more can be expressed under 140 character limit on Sina Weibo than Twitter.

Next, what do the engagement metrics on Sina Weibo look like? There are four major

metrics when one is responding to another’s post: Like, Forward, Save and Comment.

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The Like function works similarly to its Facebook archetype, except that liked content on

Weibo can’t be seen by followers in their news feed, but can only be seen when visiting that

user’s profile page.

Forwarding is the equivalent of Twitter’s Retweet and Facebook’s Share. Unlike Twitter,

Sina Weibo allows users to add a comment when forwarding a post. What’s more, if there are

more than two people forwarding a post, the last user can choose to keep the threaded comments

from all previous users (which will display in a hierarchical format). This allows users to easily

follow and participate in conversations.

Save is close to Twitter’s Favorite function: saving a post for repeated reviews. While the

favorite list is open to the public on Twitter, it can only be seen by the user on Sina Weibo.

Like Facebook and Twitter, all likes, forwards, and comments are attributed to the

original post.

On users’ personal profile page, they can also view how many times each of their posts

has been read by others.

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Picture 1 Sina Weibo home page (2014)

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Picture 2 Sina Weibo home page (2016)

Picture 3 Facebook interface

Picture 4 Pre-grouping feature on Sina Weibo

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Reference

Hu, X. (2014). Inside Sina Weibo: the most influential social platform in China. Social Media

Insights & Trends. Retrieved from http://blog.wcgworld.com/2014/09/inside-sina-weibo-

the-most-influential-social-platform-in-china

Picture 5 “Trends” on Weibo Picture 6 “Who to follow” on Weibo

Picture 7 Interface of Twitter

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http://blog.wcgworld.com/2014/09/inside-sina-weibo-the-most-influential-social-platform-in-china

http://blog.wcgworld.com/2014/09/inside-sina-weibo-the-most-influential-social-platform-in-china


Falcon, A. (2013). Twitter vs. Weibo: 8 Things Twitter Can Learn From The Latter. Hongkiat.

Retrieved from http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/things-twitter-can-learn-from-sina-weibo/

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http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/things-twitter-can-learn-from-sina-weibo/

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