The reason I really love Sina Weibo is that, although it’s inspired by Twitter, it does not simply follow Twitter’s development. Instead, Sina Weibo just keeps bringing new features, new ideas which enable it grow super faster even than Twitter (in terms of user base).
Yesterday, the manager of Sina Weibo published a weibo saying that a new version is to be released, and one screenshot was also shared. It is hard to tell what Sina Weibo will focus on in the new version from this screenshot. But just judging from the layout of the page, it seems that Sina intends to build more social elements into its Weibo. It looks like a social network, the navigation bar is moved to left column and it includes features (or we may say Applications) like Music, Photo Album, Events and Votes.
We also reported that Sina Weibo is to release its PC client about 4 month ago. Yesterday, the beta version of the client named Weibo Desktop is released for public test. I am not able to try it as it’s for Windows only, but according to its official site, it is just like an IM including all functions of weibo as well as the feature fo instant chat with your weibo followers.
I gave a talk to Google’s Assistant Product Manager (APM) guys yesterday in Shanghai. When we discussed the copy culture in China, I said, there are many Chinese sites doing pixel-by-pixel copy from western model, but Sina Weibo as an exception, started as a copy but quickly becomes Innovation.