As a pure Chinese, I thought I know our own microblog. After reading Carly’s article about Sina Weibo (https://blogs.ubc.ca/waynesucks/wp-admin/post-new.php), I do have something to say.

Nowadays, microblog has strongly pushed up the democracy in China, other than that, is the enormous potential business values. Newly established firms like to do marketing online, and social networking system is their main focus as there are a lot of teenagers, young people who use microblog everyday. And they actually occupy half of the whole market.

Also, microblog changed the way companies used to advertise. You used to see a lot of pop-up and flash advertisement online, which sometimes can be really annoying as it interrupts your user experience while surfing the Internet. Now, marketers get smarter. For example, on the site of Sina Weibo, you will not see any traditional advertisements, instead, marketers take advantage of users appeals of enhancing user experience. They would provide thousands of useful information, take online vote and do funny surveys. Every of the tweet is connected with their products. Like HTC, they post tons of tweets everyday, showing how many celebrities are using their latest product in order to attract the fans to follow.

The advantage of microblog marketing is more than this!!! For firms, they are actually spending very little money on that as Sina Weibo is free to everyone.

Advertising through tweets is still new, but we could expect an increasing number of firms will join this campaign in the near future.