Digital Addicts by Adhiyanto Goen

Here is a list on top of my own why I think it is not a direct Twitter clone, but a better one:

First off, Sina has always been a strong news website that has similar concept like Yahoo!.

Obviously their years of success in China results in a lot of fundings. This means they are able to develop partnership easier and more technology support for further improvement.

Sina was also one of the early platform with Sohu that develops bloggers, they educate the blogging scene in China. This helps them a lot in terms of having an immediate database access for them to work with.

They also actively approach well known Chinese celebrities, this definitely draws a lot of attention. Where Twitter has never really worked on this, but rather celebrities open up on their own.

When you subscribe on Sina Weibo, you’ll be prompted with questions like your mobile, your ID, where exactly do you live.

Further to that they also ask (optional) where you have worked before, the company names. This also makes it easier for you to connect to your friends or colleagues a lot faster. As you will be connecting with people you already know.

Synchronize your Weibo account with mobile (I know Twitter has this, but it doesn’t support a lot of carriers and certainly not China).

Rewards, this is something like Foursquare badges. There are different awards and I haven’t explore all of it yet.

Unlike Twitter that doesn’t have their own hosted site on what API they have open, Sina Weibo host their own app store like Apple - http://t.sina.com.cn/app. This gives people a certain level of trust.

Customize the background, this is probably the only thing that is similar to Twitter background setup. But they do come with more preset themes.

The way the whole Weibo is layout is customized on how a Chinese would use it, it is also remarkably easier and more like blogging meets BBS - the two things Chinese social media scene like.

They also have their own dedicated hotline to handle enquiries or complaint about Weibo, how’s that for customer service.

Sina Weibo is also a lot more faster in terms of giving verified account status compared to Twitter, you’d probably have to wait after Twitter check millions of people first. But you will need to provide ID and several verification that you are really representing who you are.

Last they have been very aggressive and were able to achieve probably twice if not ten times faster than Twitter - the integrated check-in service, photo, video, voicemail, native iPhone and iPad apps. It took twitter quite a while until they have their own native apps, by then other people like Uber Media has launched their own. Photo service is still not integrated into Twitter yet, not mentioning video.

Finally I don’t believe there is a fail whale for Sina Weibo, although they do have 警察叔叔 (you’ll know this word if you’re here in China).