Microblogging in China The website's layout, API, and mode of use was highly similar to Twitter, which was created earlier in 2006. Fanfou's users increased from 0.3 million to 1 million in the first half of 2009. The users included HP China, the "Southern Weekly", artist Ai Weiwei, writer Lian Yue () and TV commentator Liang Wendao (). Some other weibo services, such as Jiwai, Digu, Zuosa and Tencent's Taotao were launched in 2006-2009. After the July 2009 Ürümqi riots, the CPC government shut down most of the domestic weibo services, including Fanfou and Jiwai. Many popular non China-based microblogging services such as
Sina Weibo 313 million monthly active users and 139 million daily active users; In combination with the critical time nodes for the development of Weibo, let us tentatively divide the growth of Weibo from its birth into three stages, namely; On 9 April 2013, Alibaba Group announced that it would acquire 18 percent of Sina Weibo for $586 million, with an option to buy up to 30 percent in the future. When Sina Weibo went to NASDAQ, Alibaba exercised the option. Now Alibaba owns 32 percent of Sina Weibo. According to iResearch's report on 30 March 2011, Sina Weibo had 56.5% of