Microblogging in China Microblogging in China Weibo (微博) is the Chinese word for "microblog". It refers to mini-blogging services in China, including social chat sites and platform sharing. Weibo uses a format similar to its American counterpart Twitter, but used almost exclusively by Chinese language speakers; this has a direct impact on features such as hashtags on Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo, which both employ a double-hashtag "#HashName#" method, since the lack of spacing between Chinese characters necessitates a closing tag. Internet users can set up real-time information sharing communities individually, and upload and update information in 140 character blocks. A major difference
Microblogging in China instant messaging service QQ's users, Tencent Weibo later attracted more registered users than Sohu Weibo and NetEase Weibo. The public beta versions of NetEase Weibo and Sohu Weibo were launched on March 20 and April 7, 2010, respectively. All these weibos, provided by the Chinese Internet giants, used the subdomain "t.example.com", such as t.sina.com.cn for Sina Weibo, t.qq.com for Tencent Weibo, t.sohu.com for Sohu Weibo, t.163.com for NetEase Weibo. On 7 April 2011, the leader of the weibo services Sina Weibo started to use an independent domain name weibo.com acquired earlier, in an attempt to build up its own brand.