Survey of Sina Weibo users

According to the relevant news, as of the end of 2012, Sina registered users have 503 million people. In a seven-day period, 86.9% of the users did not send their own posts, and 88.9% of the users did not forward the original posts of others. By contrast, 0.5% of users have sent over 20 tweets in seven days, and 0.5% have forwarded more than 40 different tweets over the same period.

The highest in Chinese is new Sina, which is often described as a virtual city square, in which the Chinese are able to openly discuss topics ranging from politics to pop stars, with degrees of freedom not available elsewhere in China.

If so, a new study shows that the square is far less crowded than it looks.

The study, conducted by the University of Hong Kong University, was designed to examine a random sample of about 30,000 users who are using Sina Weibo. 57% of the respondents did not send a microblog during the survey, indicating that they were either inactive or a member of the so-called "zombie account", an account created by the marketing organization to manipulate the number of followers for the real account.

But more than that. The study looked more closely at about 12,000 accounts that had been posted on Weibo during the survey, and found that Sina Weibo was more like a speech corner in Hyde Park in London than a city square, dominated by a handful of outspoken users. Hyde In a seven-day period, researchers found that 86.9% of users did not post original posts, and 88.9% of users did not forward other people's original posts. By contrast, 0.5% of users have been sending more than 20 tweets in seven days, and another 0.5% have forwarded more than 40 different tweets over the same period of time.

The study was conducted in 2012. According to King-wa Fu, one of the authors of the study, the development since then may have changed user behavior to some extent, including attempts to implement a real-name registration system and to increase censorship Fu Jinghua.

Nonetheless, the findings give new insight into the social-media services of Sina Weibo. Sina Weibo has been praised for reshaping China's public discussion platform, but the understanding of it remains slim. Analysts are unsure of the significance of Sina's microblogging data, and they are particularly interested in knowing how many people use Sina Weibo regularly.

Sina Weibo each province permeability, the darker the color represents the higher the penetration rate

A hot map from the University of Hong Kong shows the penetration rate of Sina Weibo in China's provinces, and the darker the color, the higher the frequency of use. According to Sina, as of the end of 2012, its registered users have 503 million people. Less than 220 million of users have posted on Sina Weibo, according to a 57% percentage of users who have not posted a microblog in the survey period mentioned above. The results of the study also showed that only about 30 million users would send an original post within a week.

Sina said at the end of last year on a recent earnings call, Sina Weibo active users have 46.2 million people, which means that many active users are not in the microblogging or forwarding microblogging, but in "diving."

Similarly, the world's most well-known microblogging service Twitter (Twitter) Active users are also far below the total number of users. Last summer, the research institute Semiocast estimated that the number of Twitter users was about 500 million and that active users were 170 million. Semiocast defines active users as users who have sent messages, paid attention to another user or changed their avatar during a three-month period. And Sina Weibo similar, Twitter also has a lot of users are mainly in the "diving", landing just to see the post, not their own post.

' We have 40% active users just log in and see what happens, ' the company wrote in a 2011 blog post.

The study found that fewer than 5% of non-zombie Sina Weibo users ' tweets were commented or forwarded, suggesting that much of the discussion on Sina Weibo was driven by a handful of influential microblogging users.

If Sina Weibo is driven by influential users, it is also driven by the user's location, according to the study.

The study found that more than One-fourth of the 12,000 Sina Weibo users visited were in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong province. Internet users in these three places account for 9% of the total number of Chinese netizens. Unsurprisingly, the study found that the highest penetration rate for Sina Weibo was China's richer eastern seaboard.

What is more surprising is Tibet. The penetration rate of Sina Weibo in Tibet is much higher than that in Xinjiang, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces.

Although these are not necessarily detrimental to the value of Sina Weibo, whether it's a tool for advertisers or the value of a platform for public discussion, the findings are a useful reminder that the views, desires and concerns of Sina Weibo are only a small minority of Chinese internet users.