Anatomy Of New Sina Weibo, Is It More Than a Microblogging Site?

Whether you like it or not, Sina finally rolled out the new look of its Weibo to a small group of users. Like other typical Chinese web site, the page is now fully packed with menus, information and links. For the readers who are interested in the new layout but don’t read Chinese, here is the anatomy of the new Weibo. I don’t think it makes much sense to company it with the Twitter any more, but you probably can have some sense that if Sina Weibo is more than a microblogging site, i.e. is it evolving to a social network?

Layout – The page is re-designed and now has three column instead of the original two to give more space for more content and features.

Online Chat – the most interesting feature the new version brought in is the Online Chat. Just like Facebook online chat, user now is able to see which friends (Note, Friends here mean you two follow each other) are currently online on Weibo and chat with them. The conversation is saved as the direct messages;

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