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 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