Sina Weibo the domestic microblogging services including the first weibo service Fanfou. Many popular non-China-based microblogging services like Twitter, Facebook, and Plurk have been blocked from viewing since then. Sina's CEO Charles Chao considered this to be an opportunity. SINA Corporation launched the tested version of Sina Weibo on 14 August 2009. Basic functions including message, private message, comment and re-post were made possible in September 2009. A Sina Weibo–compatible API platform for developing third-party applications was launched on 28 July 2010. On 1 December 2010, the website experienced an outage, which administrators later said was due to the increasing numbers of
Sina Weibo might not always be in favor of government officials, many Chinese officials opened Weibo accounts as to give their own version of events. On 16 March 2012, all the Beijing users of Sina Weibo were told to register with their real names. From 31 March 2012, the comment function of Sina Weibo was shut down for three days, along with Tencent QQ. In May 2012, Sina Weibo introduced new restrictions on the content its 300 million users can post. An example of Sina Weibo's censorship and manipulation of discussion or public social activity was the blocking of Foxconn workers' strikes