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 users and posts. Registered users surpassed 100 million before March 2011. Since 23 March 2011, t.cn has been used as Sina Weibo's official URL shortening domain name in lieu of sinaurl.cn. On 7 April 2011, weibo.com replaced t.sina.com.cn as the new domain used by the website. Meanwhile, the official logo was also updated. In June 2011, Sina announced an English-language version of Sina Weibo would be developed and launched, where the contents would still be controlled by China's laws. On January 11, 2013, Weibo (a subsidiary of SINA Corporation) and Alibaba China (a subsidiary of Alibaba Group) signed a strategic