Sina Weibo China's microblogging market based on active users and 86.6% based on browsing time over competitors such as Tencent Weibo and Baidu's services. The top 100 users had over 485 million followers combined. Furthermore, Sina said that more than 5,000 companies and 2,700 media organizations in China use Sina Weibo. The site is maintained by a growing microblogging department of 200 employees responsible for technology, design, operations, and marketing. Sina executives invited and persuaded many Chinese celebrities to join the platform. The users of Sina Weibo include Asian celebrities, movie stars, singers, famous business and media figures, athletes, scholars, artists, organizations,
Microblogging in China Twitter, Facebook and Plurk have been blocked since then. Sina.com's CEO Charles Chao considered it to be an opportunity. Sina launched Sina Weibo on August 14, 2009. Its executives invited and persuaded many Chinese celebrities to join the service, which led to strong growth in user numbers. Two other Chinese Internet portals, Sohu and NetEase, launched the beta versions of their weibo sites almost simultaneously, on January 20, 2010. On January 30, another Internet portal Tencent closed its weibo service, Taotao, and started its new weibo service Tencent Weibo on March 5, 2010. Building on the large number of its