Running head: TECHNICAL ANALYSIS OF SINA WEIBO AND TWITTER Technical Analysis of Sina Weibo and Twitter Ge Wang University of Southern California 1
Running head: TECHNICAL ANALYSIS OF SINA WEIBO AND TWITTER
Technical Analysis of Sina Weibo and Twitter
Ge Wang
University of Southern California
1
Running head: TECHNICAL ANALYSIS OF SINA WEIBO AND TWITTER
Technical Analysis of Sina Weibo and Twitter
Three years after Twitter was launched, Sina Weibo, established in China in 2009, is now
the largest microblogging service in China. It has gained more than 140 million users within two
years, while Twitter spent five years gaining 200 million (Falcon, 2013). Technically speaking,
the two most influential social platforms in the world share a lot in common and yet display their
own features that make them distinct from each other. This paper analyses the technical
similarities and differences between Sina Weibo and Twitter, which include the user interface
(the design of the platform), the content platforms (video, text, etc.), the social networking
elements (like, share, comment, chat), the analytics, curation, and algorithms.
User Interface
Speaking of user interface, Sina Weibo looks like a hybrid of a bunch of social media
platforms. First, it models the key features from Twitter, including “profile Picture”, “Following
#”, “Follower #”, “Weibo/Tweets #”, “Trends”, and “Who to follow”. Furthermore, it draws
inspirations from Facebook. The left side bar follows the basic format of “Groups” on Facebook
(see picture 1, 2, 3) yet got tweaked a little bit in some details. Picture 4 shows the drop-down
menu of “Follow” and its sub-feature “Pre-grouping” where Sina Weibo helps users categorize
their followed accounts into different topic groups such as fashion, celebrity and fitness etc.
What makes Sina Weibo’s creativity on design far outweighs Twitter’s lies in the trends
classification on the search page. Falcon posited that Sina Weibo is excelled at trends
categorization:
Weibo has a dedicated page for trends…(of) the hottest trends of last hour, or
today or even this week. Weibo is always prepared to tell you what are trends
that users really into in the specified time. Categorization is king when it comes
2
Running head: TECHNICAL ANALYSIS OF SINA WEIBO AND TWITTER
to sort overloaded trends, and Weibo scored full marks on this part by categorize
all hottest trends into several categories such as general, sport, entertainment,
finance, gaming, travelling, just about everything people might be interested
about! (Falcon, 2013, paragraph 4)
Compared to Sina Weibo, Twitter’s search page “Moments” has not much to offer:
today’s topical news, sports, entertainment and fun.
Last but not least, another new feature that’s unique to Sina Weibo is its “comprehensive
product roadmap, including Gaming, E-commerce and LBS service, which leads Sina Weibo
toward a robust SNS” (Hu, 2014, paragraph 2).
The Content Platform
Sina Weibo offers various choices of content to post. In addition to text, pictures and
links, users can add emoticons, directly upload videos, write long-weibos (which is essentially a
blog in picture format without character limit), share music and files, create questions and polls,
and even launch charity events.
Users can schedule the time to post a weibo; they also have the freedom to decide who
can see their posts: to the public, to selected groups, or keep it to themselves.
Uses can add up to 9 pictures (including gif format) in a single post, and pictures can be
posted together with a video.
140 Chinese characters translate to more words than 140 English characters, which
means a lot more can be expressed under 140 character limit on Sina Weibo than Twitter.
Next, what do the engagement metrics on Sina Weibo look like? There are four major
metrics when one is responding to another’s post: Like, Forward, Save and Comment.
3
Running head: TECHNICAL ANALYSIS OF SINA WEIBO AND TWITTER
The Like function works similarly to its Facebook archetype, except that liked content on
Weibo can’t be seen by followers in their news feed, but can only be seen when visiting that
user’s profile page.
Forwarding is the equivalent of Twitter’s Retweet and Facebook’s Share. Unlike Twitter,
Sina Weibo allows users to add a comment when forwarding a post. What’s more, if there are
more than two people forwarding a post, the last user can choose to keep the threaded comments
from all previous users (which will display in a hierarchical format). This allows users to easily
follow and participate in conversations.
Save is close to Twitter’s Favorite function: saving a post for repeated reviews. While the
favorite list is open to the public on Twitter, it can only be seen by the user on Sina Weibo.
Like Facebook and Twitter, all likes, forwards, and comments are attributed to the
original post.
On users’ personal profile page, they can also view how many times each of their posts
has been read by others.
4
Running head: TECHNICAL ANALYSIS OF SINA WEIBO AND TWITTER
Picture 1 Sina Weibo home page (2014)
5
Running head: TECHNICAL ANALYSIS OF SINA WEIBO AND TWITTER
Picture 2 Sina Weibo home page (2016)
Picture 3 Facebook interface
Picture 4 Pre-grouping feature on Sina Weibo
6
Running head: TECHNICAL ANALYSIS OF SINA WEIBO AND TWITTER
Reference
Hu, X. (2014). Inside Sina Weibo: the most influential social platform in China. Social Media
Insights & Trends. Retrieved from http://blog.wcgworld.com/2014/09/inside-sina-weibo-
the-most-influential-social-platform-in-china
Picture 5 “Trends” on Weibo Picture 6 “Who to follow” on Weibo
Picture 7 Interface of Twitter
7
Running head: TECHNICAL ANALYSIS OF SINA WEIBO AND TWITTER
Falcon, A. (2013). Twitter vs. Weibo: 8 Things Twitter Can Learn From The Latter. Hongkiat.
Retrieved from http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/things-twitter-can-learn-from-sina-weibo/
8