Weibo – Opium of the Masses

Weibo – the only talk in town, whether in China or elsewhere

What is a Weibo ? As its name indicates, it is a microblog on which you can write 140 chinese characters (equivalent to 1,400 of our letters), and which allows you to attach a picture which can be changed at will from your mobile phone, and sent with a new text to all your followers. In short, a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook, all of which (picture, text and blog access) is managed in three seconds through a mobile phone.

A formidably effective communication tool, whose versatility comes from the fact that 140 chinese characters offer a lot of room for expression, available at any time

While Twitter is forbidden in China, Weibos are proliferating. The one from sina.com, the first to appear two years ago, will end up eating up the giant internet portal which generated it. On par with Sina and counting more than 200 million users, Tencent Weibo is the child of Tencent instant messaging (among other things), a local social network. Then there are others, smaller, less advertised.

As Chinese political experts point out, Weibos were not shut down last summer, when popular discontent (also spread by these same weibos) was very high due to the high speed rail crash. Could Weibo be the Facebook of Chinese “Jasmin Revolution” ?

I am just back from two weeks in China and after seeing how my Chinese friends use Weibo, I can’t help wondering what the future holds for social networks in China. Each time I have been to the restaurant with a Chinese, the same ritual took place : when the meal arrived, my Chinese guest took out his phone, photographed the food, incorporated it in his weibo and sent it to all his followers. As I discussed this with them, I realised that the “civilized” Chinese have their weibo which they use particularly at restaurants or trips. They find it pleasing for their self estime and think that Weibo gives another dimension to their life. Everyone knows at any time what everyone else is doing, and the Chinese use this in a very compulsive way. I am rather impressed by this dimension. On the one hand, one could almost measure the popularity of a restaurant by counting the number of messages devoted to its food. On the other, you now need time before eating for the Weibo. Finally, everyone knows what everyone is eating.

The Chinese, through this Weibo phenomenon, remind us how important eating is for them, how it shapes Chinese social relations and how it plays a role even in the most futuristic dimensions of our humanity. It is clear that Weibo occupies a real place in Chinese society. It may at times be reassuring that, when faced with such novel media and rites, traditional values remain as strong and even stronger than ever
I don’t know whether Weibo will become a major tool for urban warfare against the political system, but it has clearly entered daily lives of the Chinese as a tool for self promotion. Whether these two aspects are compatible is a question for another day.