SINA WEIBO is the most widely used micro-blog in China, which has more than 300 million users by the end of 2011. WEIBO is like the Chinese version of Twitter. On December 16th, 2011, “Beijing Micro-blog Development Management Rules” were released by Beijing Municipal Government Information Office and Beijing Police Department, requiring WEIBO users to register with their real identities and micro-blogging service providers must verify their user identifications.
This policy represents a continuing effort of government control over the online world in China. By the end of 2011, China had more than 500 million web users. The rapid growth of the popularity of internet had greatly challenged the government’s control capacity and had put great pressure on it. Using the internet for educational or business purposes is encouraged by the government, but using the internet to spread pornographic or subversive materials is not permitted.
“The government is strengthening its control over microblogs after a bullet train crash in July 2011 that killed 40 people prompted an online outpouring of criticism of the official response.” Currently, Chinese users do not have access to Facebook and YouTube without using a VPN, and have restricted access to Google on concerns that those websites might contain information that is pornographic or subversive due to a less restrictive standard of information filtering.
It is unclear how much this policy will hurt the micro-blogging business, especially SINA WEIBO. SINA’s stock price dropped as much as 11% before closing the day up 5%, and SINA’s stock price is on an upward trend since then. Despite the real name registration requirement, more and more micro bloggers are using WEIBO as their primary source of news.