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
Mass surveillance in China Weibo. At the beginning of 2018, Ma Huateng, chairman and CEO of Tencent, said that WeChat's MAU(monthly active users) across the globe reached a billion for the first time. Since Tencent has good cooperation with the central government to implement self-censorship and mass surveillance, it enjoys the dominance in China. Other messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, messenger, Line, etc, are mostly blocked or even forced out of the Chinese market. Chinese Internet users have several ways to circumvent censorship. Netizens generally rely on VPN, i.e.“Virtual Private Networks”, to get access to those blocked websites and messaging apps. However, in July