WSJ: How many people are using Sina Weibo

According to foreign media reports, the Wall Street Journal website "China Real Times" column recently published a discussion, Sina Weibo in the end how many real users. The report cites a 2012-year study by the University of Hong Kong, which says more than half of the social media services are inactive. The information presented above it represents only the views of a few users.

The following is an excerpt from the article:

As a popular microblogging service in China, Sina's microblog is often described as a virtual civic square. Whether it's a political topic or a pop star, the Chinese can discuss many topics openly here, and the scale of the content enjoys a rare loosening.

But a new study suggests there may be a gap in the square compared to what people think.

Researchers at the University of Hong Kong are investigating the question of who is using Sina Weibo. The study randomly selected about 30,000 microblogging users to investigate, and found that 57% of users did not post during the survey, which means that if they are not inactive, they are registered by marketing companies to manipulate the number of so-called "zombie accounts".

Addition。 By looking closely at the approximately 12,000 users who posted posts during the survey, the study found that it might not be appropriate to refer to Sina Weibo as a civic square, which would be more appropriate as a "Cape of speech" at Hyde Park in London, where much of the debate is dominated by a handful of good debaters. Researchers found that, in seven days, 86.9% of users never wrote an original, and 88.9% of the users did not forward the original account. By contrast, in seven days, more than 20 users posted more than 0.5%, while another 0.5% of users forwarded more than 40 different messages.

The study was conducted in 2012. According to Fu Jinghua, an assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong who wrote the report, the behavior of Sina Weibo users will change somewhat after the investigation, with the introduction of the real-name registration mechanism and the strengthening of supervision.

The findings may shed some mystery on the social media service, which is known for reinventing the public channel, but there are still many unknowns. Since Sina's own microblogging data metrics are difficult to gauge, analysts have been hoping to know how many people will use the service on a regular basis.

Sina Weibo has 503 million registered users by the end of 2012, according to Sina. If the ratio of 57% inactive users to the study is applied, less than 220 million of those who actually post on Sina Weibo. The study also found that within a specific week, only about 30 million users would write an original post. In the latest quarterly earnings call, Sina said Weibo had 46.2 million active daily users by the end of last year. So this means that a large part of the so-called active users, will not post or forward information, just on the internet "look around."

In this regard, Sina Weibo is similar to Twitter, the world's best-known microblogging service. Active users are usually far less than the total number of users. Last summer, Semiocast, a market research agency, estimated that Twitter's total users were around 500 million, while the number of active users was only 170 million. Twitter defines active users as those who post, focus on others, or change avatars for three months. Similarly to Sina Weibo, there are quite a few people on Twitter who just regard the service as a means of getting information, registering only for the attention of others and never posting.

"Our 40% active users are registered just to listen to what is happening in their world," wrote a 2011 article by Twitter's official blog. ”

The study found that in Sina Weibo non-zombie users, write a post can get a forwarding or comment on the proportion of less than 5%. It also suggests that much of the discussion on Weibo is driven by a handful of influential bloggers.

If the impact on Sina Weibo, the balance of influence is only a minority, then the geographical distribution of users is also very uneven.

The authors found that Beijing, Shanghai and three of Guangdong's 9% netizens are home to Sina Weibo users. Of the 12,000 users surveyed, more than One-fourth came from the three. At the same time, it can be easily thought that the study found that Sina Weibo users in the eastern coastal region the highest penetration rate.

Surprisingly, however, the penetration rate of Weibo users in Tibet is much higher than in the surrounding provinces of Xinjiang, Sichuan and Yunnan.

While these findings do not necessarily affect the value of the service, the appeal and attention on Sina Weibo, as a tool for advertisers and the information public, represents only a very limited minority of Chinese netizens.