The difference between Twitter and Weibo

In the eyes of Twitter engineers, the difference between Sina Weibo and Twitter is shown in the following 4 points:

1,twitter the principle of simplicity, Sina Weibo, on the other hand, advocates the principle of rich – compared to Sina Weibo, which is more like a company led by multiple product managers.

2, Sina Weibo is like a micro-forum that supports and encourages netizens to discuss forwarding; instead, Twitter discourages discussion.

3, Sina's system design encourages everybody to play the social attire b,twitter to the news information itself pays more attention.

4,twitter to find the precise advertising of the pattern, has now been profitable. Sina Weibo has yet to find the right way to make a profit.

The following is the author's full text:

No matter how the industry sings the decline of Sina Weibo, at least Alibaba still recognizes Sina hand this mobile interconnection ticket. Sina Weibo is valued at about $3.256 billion by Ali, and is roughly calculated by the number of Sina Weibo 500 million registered users, which is equivalent to about 40 yuan per user, and is higher than the $5 trillion value (about 32 yuan) per user when Facebook is listed. Sina Weibo, which won the loss of its users, contrasts with its own American reference Twitter, which has a number of registered users in the 500 million, but has long been profitable through the advertising business.

The author sees the recent headlines in a series of news stories of Twitter (the Boston bombings first started on Twitter), and can't help wondering why Sina Weibo is drifting away from its own ' master '. With this in doubt, the author visited Twitter headquarters and interviewed several Chinese engineers, hoping to hear what they said about Sina Weibo and Twitter.

Twitter's simplicity vs. Sina Weibo

A Twitter engineer told me that the Sina Weibo he sees is a company led by multiple product managers. All kinds of new features are non-stop online (micro-magazine, micro-network, micro-disk, micro-video, in short all kinds of micro). Sina will ' micro-blog ' greatly ' rich ': micro-blog, long micro-blog, instant chat, watch news, participate in hot discussions, make friends, social, see public awareness of the contests and so on. In the view of Twitter engineers, Sina Weibo's overall design principle is not very clear: the revision is many times, hundreds of functions are various, do not know how many product managers are sharpening their heads to try to put their ideas into.

Twitter, by contrast, advocates the ' to Jane ' principle (simplify is one of the company's 10 core values). This, we can see from the Twitter interface design. Unlike Sina Weibo, which has a wide range of functional recommendations, Twitter has no intention of making a fuss about additional functionality, but rather trying to steer everyone's attention to the middle of the push, which is the essence of information. The respondents told me that Twitter was designed so tightly that it could not add anything, and the function was never the better. From birth to the present, Twitter has followed a product logic, firmly positioning itself as a mobile-side information broadcasting platform. This ' Blue Bird ' has a very simple mission since its inception: to satisfy folks's desire for expression and sharing, and to tell the world through fragmented information, "What are you doing?" (What are you doing). Twitter knows what it wants and doesn't.

Twitter's stubbornness, Sina Weibo's adaptation

A Twitter engineer quipped, "I went to Twitter to see the microblogging itself (whether it's my friends or CNN), to refresh the wave Weibo, more for comment and forwarding." The respondents invariably referred to Sina Weibo's ' micro-forum ' gene, which they viewed as a particularly encouraging commentary and forwarding platform. A little news-worthy post like ' raise a dog at home ' can have tens of thousands of tweets and comments on Sina Weibo, which is almost unthinkable on Twitter unless the publisher is Lady Gaga.

As a matter of fact, we rarely see anything on Twitter that is ' for the purpose of initiating a discussion ' (like "You've seen four great masterpieces in one sentence"). Whether it's Gaga, ordinary people or Samsung Mobile (Samsung moving the authentication account), the tweets are all have a certain substance content (or link), it can be a description of the mood, the state of expression, a sense of, a notice, a knowledge, An ad and so on, but it's definitely not going to be ' raise a dog's hand ' at home.

Around Sina Weibo's ' micro-forum ' gene, I summarize it with Twitter's most notable differences:

1 Twitter Retweet (forwarding) By default without additional information, is a one-click operation. This is very different from Sina Weibo's forwarding, we click on Sina Weibo ' forwarding ', immediately will appear "//@ So-and-so" words, encourage you to "//" before adding your comments or attitude extension and so on.

2 responded to a microblog on Sina Weibo that would have been similar to Twitter's ' Reply '. But Sina Weibo supplemented the "Reply + forwarding" function, as long as in response to the forwarding on the hook, we reply to the content will be "I reply to the East//@ So-and-so" form to become their own release of an independent microblog.

3 whether it is a reply or a forwarding, Sina Weibo will be accompanied by the original text and context, and on Twitter, if we want to see the context of information, we must click on the information itself. The former helps everyone understand the ins and outs of the posts within two or three seconds so that they can quickly participate in the discussion, which allows you to focus on a particular chain of information without interfering with irrelevant content (many times the affiliate discussion of a comment deviates from the topic).

4 Sina each microblog will directly present the picture, the comment number and the forwarding number or even reads the number and so on information (stimulates everybody's forwarding desire); Twitter is not. Browsing the text, we see only Gonggongzhengzheng text, only click on the text itself, in order to get pictures, forwarding the number of more detailed information.

Sina play social dress B,twitter focus on news

In the eyes of Twitter engineers, Sina Weibo has more time to serve as a platform for discussion. Sina does not put its own portal gene, in the micro-blogging platform ' artificial ' added some topic induction and guidance, such as "Hot microblogging" and "Wind and roll" and so on. Grasp our people like to watch and follow the mentality of the following, Sina Weibo through the very easy to operate the forwarding + comments and other functions to guide everyone to participate in the discussion, exposure. Sina's various intentions to achieve their own ' micro-forum ' gene, for the platform gathered a very high popularity, of course, also brought a little trouble.

One respondent said Sina Weibo's system design makes social attire b more likely to benefit on this platform, "Sina Weibo is designed to encourage users ' forwarding behavior, and it takes a lot of effort to get people to notice a tweet, but it doesn't take much thought to organize information, Can not lead people to view the information itself in a more objective way. In this way, we tend to be superficially involved in some type of theatrical discussion that has no substance; you come to me, everyone is "consuming emotions, not truth." Sina Weibo has unknowingly raised a bunch of plausible large, full of emotional words and unfortunately become speculators regardless of the user experience marketing platform.

Unlike Sina Weibo, Twitter is even deliberately weakening its social attributes, committed to the attention of everyone to the maximum direction to the information itself (do not open a push text, you can not see the picture, which effectively eliminates the picture is not the text only to attract the attention of the situation; how many times a tweet is forwarded is not directly presented, Not directly encourage comparisons or guide users to see the lively). In addition, "Twitter has spent more effort to optimize the search for information and to present an objective development of events than Sina Weibo." The Boston bombing once again fully embodies Twitter's journalistic attributes; the first shot-related tweets were only 20 seconds away, and the first suspect's photo was the first to float on Twitter.

Twitter's earnings mechanism, Sina Weibo's expected

According to industry analysts/experts, Twitter has begun using advertising to make money, and a few weeks ago it locked up a large list of years of advertising with SMG's advertising companies, such as Agent Procter and Gamble, Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart.

"Our ad is ' Twitter, '" said the Twitter engineer, "Twitter will not be able to put all kinds of ' Banner ' (banner ads, Flash-away) on the interface like Sina Weibo because it hurts the user experience." Using sophisticated and accurate ad delivery systems, Twitter selectively recommends to users the ads they are most likely to be interested in, based on their available user information. In short, "The user experience is the most important, we strive to accept ads when users have no information interruption, and no content forced to insert the feeling." Advertisers pay by clicking on Twitter, and if an ad hits the spot consistently low, Twitter's algorithm will reduce the frequency of the ad or increase its cost. "Twitter has created such a mechanism to effectively encourage advertisers to design high-quality ads, and it's a virtuous circle to increase the click rate of ads without impacting the user experience." ”

Compared with the successful business model of Twitter, the news-Yincuoyangcha Sina has been running up the topic and gossip on Weibo, thus raising a vote of the grassroots, and giving the advertising opportunities to these gossip celebrities. This has made Sina Weibo stretched its advertising earnings and even had to sacrifice the user experience to grab food from the tuba.

Now, Sina Weibo, in addition to advertising, other changes may still have to pull together with Alibaba. Sina Weibo is a collection of thousands of love in a decline goddess, Ko handsome Alibaba at this time to buy Sina Weibo may be able to reverse the plight of the latter, Sina Weibo's liquidity strategy and Twitter is drifting away may be less important. But in the end, it remains to be seen.