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 etc. The users of Weibo interact much more with each other than the users of Twitter do. Many topics that go viral on Weibo also started from the platform itself, while Twitter topics often come from the news or events that take place outside Twitter. Sina Weibo has an identification policy. It is like Twitter's verified account which could verify the identity of famous person, organization and so on. Once a user gets through the verification on the internet, a colorful V is appended to their username. An orange V is for people, while a blue one is for organizations