Back on February 28, 2011, our Guest Blogger Weidong “Jim” Zhang wrote a blog titled “U.S. Businesses Need Face On These Top 5 Chinese Social Media Places.” Because China has effectively pushed its own social media platforms while suppressing foreign ones like Facebook, Youtube, etc., many U.S. businesses have been somewhat closed about exploring Chinese social media. Plus, with Chinese social media there’s the huge issue of language difference that makes for an exceedingly tough bridge for occidentals to cross. But none of this has deterred Chinese social media from penetrating the U.S. market with force.
Though RenRen was the first Chinese social media company to debut on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), it seems far from the last, with others like Sina-Weibo on its heels. Reuters reported in this June 6, 2011 article that Sina Plans U.S. Launch of Weibo as Twitter Rival: Techweb. This launch will test Twitter’s market durability, as U.S. based social media users will be able to establish accounts on an English version of the China-based Sina-Weibo microblog.
It’s hard to imagine that Twitter could lose so many followers to Weibo, which many consider a Chinese version of Twitter, or in other words a knockoff or clone. But, if Weibo really were a Twitter clone, then would it have any chance at all here in the U.S.? What would be its added value? One Business Insider article says it isn’t fair to call “China’s much better version of Twitter” a clone or a knockoff. “It [Weibo] is a better designed and more stable product, and Sina’s product roadmap appears to have it heading towards a robust SNS, almost like Facebook. I hope Twitter has people dissecting Weibo, as they could learn a lot.”
With that said, U.S. merchants, online and physical, should stay tuned for updates on what new Chinese-built social media platforms are being launched in the U.S. The common misconception seems to be that Chinese social media platforms are cheap copies of those invented first in the U.S. However, if Weibo’s higher quality coding is a harbinger of what is to come in the world of social media, it’s worth checking out.
Once you’ve put Weibo in the ring with Twitter, let us know who’s left standing.
