Microblogging in China in spreading the news quickly and discussing and evaluating government response. In 2012, there were 309 million people microblogging in China. "Wei boke" (微博客) and "weixing boke" (微型博客), commonly abbreviated as "weibo" (微博), are Chinese words for "microblog". A China-based microblogging service often names itself a weibo by putting it after the name of the service (e.g. Tencent Weibo, Sina Weibo). A similar word "围脖" () is used as Internet slang for "weibo". Fanfou () is the earliest notable weibo service. It was launched in Beijing on May 12, 2007 by the co-founder of Xiaonei (now Renren) Wang Xing ().
Sina Weibo a large number of government departments, enterprises, and non-governmental organizations to open accounts on Sina Weibo, using it as a platform for publishing and communicating information. To avoid the impersonation of celebrity weibo, those celebrities' accounts would add an orange letter "V" and those organizations' accounts would add a blue letter "V". The orange letter "V" and the blue letter "V" are the real-name certifications for them to show the difference between ordinary users and micro-bloggers. However, the functions of weibo are the same for every user. Sina Weibo has more than 500 million registered users; there are 313 million