App Of The Day: Weibo

Chinese Twitter goes mobile for iPhone and Android.

Weibo is a 'mini-blogging' service launched by Chinese internet firm SINA. Users post short messages, with the ability to add pictures, links and other content, using a follow-based system to keep tabs on what other people are saying.

Sound familiar? Yes, Weibo is regularly described as 'The Chinese Twitter', and for good reason. It launched in 2009, and is now reportedly used by 30% of Chinese internet users: 140 million people at the end of the first quarter of 2011.

Like Twitter, the service also now has a mobile apps element. SINA has just launched iPhone and Android apps for Weibo, providing access to its core features on the go.

The description on the App Store and Android Market is brief and to the point, giving little away on specific features of the apps, favouring instead a description of Weibo as "the new inter-active application that will be widely used, fast spread and it surely will be distinguished to the world".

That does imply a global focus though: the Weibo apps are available around the world, not just in China.

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