Sina Debuts Social Magazine Sina View

Sometimes I am such a fossil, when I want to read news I’ll only refer to news sites, and when I feel like interacting with friends I’ll use SNS apps. And if I incidentally have access to too much irrelevant information while I’m reading news or communicating with friends, I could have been annoyed, just like anyone else will. To make that worse, the current Internet products are all focusing on versatility and multifunction instead of minimalist or simple is beautiful.

screenshot of Web-based Sina View

Recently Sina’s social magazine Sina View (Sina Shiye) just released a new version to ramp up its social features. Launched earlier this year it only runs on iPad and looks similar to the Sina News mobile app. Now it’s also available for mobiles and PCs.

Logging in with you Sina Weibo account, you can subscribe to channels you take a like to. Then you’ll see those channels on the right column, the news feeds appear in the middle and the left colum is saved for friends you followed on Weibo. Here in the right column you can also browse your Weibo content. Since the content I followed on Weibo is quite similar to the channels I subscribed to on the View, it feels like much the same. You can also repost articles to Weibo.

Sina View also launched a new HTML5-powered web version which is visually impressive with animation and simple design. Besides the choice of channels, a fresh function is allowing users to provide their own RSS and it’s also integrated with the Weibo account. It is a good way to engage Weibo users.

According to Sina View team, the new version for iPad will come soon and will still focus on Weibo users’ social connections.

How do you like it?