Which Weibo users should I follow ?

[weigeren]

Hi all,

I am thinking of opening a Weibo account, pretty much for the sake of it. I mean, I am not really going to "use" it in the same way that I don't have a Twitter account, but I would like to use as a source for light "real life" reading Chinese material. Now, I am sure there will be some users focused on teaching Chinese (like "a chinese sentence a day", "all about Chinese" etc ... already are on Facebook) ... so would you please recommend me some users I can follow , or some light (hopely amusing) reading / topic I should follow as a start ?

[zhouhaochen]

I was under the impression that now you need a Chinese ID number to open a Weibo account. Is that not the case? Would love to hear from your practical experience there.

[xuefang]

No you don't need a Chinese ID number to open a Weibo account. I openend my own months (or a year) ago and a friend opened hers few days ago.

Who to follow then? You can search for weibos/tweets or people with key words you find interesting. You can also check the 热门微博 and 热门话题 for top weibo's or topics at the moment. Great way to see what China is discussing at the moment.When you find one interesting weibo, then remember to check who is following it so find more perhaps related weibos.

For anyone living in China you should search for weibos about your city. There are many weibos introducing great events, restaurants and cafes in Guangzhou for example.

[jasoninchina]

I've been wondering the same thing, so I'll be interested so see who people recommend.

Besides my friends and local businesses, the only person I follow is 大山。 He tweets (weebs?) perhaps once a day.

I've never used twitter, but I'm pretty sure weibo and it are equally ridiculous. So be prepared for lots of garbage. Unless you like to see pictures of what people ate for dinner last night.

It's all a matter of finding the right people who have interesting things to say.

99% what I had for dinner last night/dress I bought last weekend

1% interesting/funny

[ouyangjun]

I've been on Weibo for years now. You only need to register with an ID number if you become verified (then you get a cool V next to your name). I follow about 40 Weibo's and I have 291 粉丝 (fans) following me. Here are the ones I suggest:

18禁漫画微博

另类GIF你懂的

视觉日刊

孙子学院远程教育中心HSK网考

韩寒

最搞笑精选区

苹果汇

n词酷

煎蛋超载鸡

Most of the other ones I follow are related to Shanghai (where I live), a vegan/vegetarian lifestyle (which would only appeal to other vegans/vegetarians), etc. The ones above can be for most people. You are also welcome to follow my nonsense on weibo at 帅老外。

[Guest realmayo]

From http://asia.cnet.com/blogs/foreign-users-of-weibo-in-confusion-as-chinas-real-name-deadline-looms-62213416.htm

March 16th is the crunch day. That's the date on which the hundreds of millions of people who use China's microblogging sites--such as Sina's or Tencent's Weibo--need to register with their real names and ID numbers

...

Users who don't prove their real name will no longer be able to post to Tencent's t.qq.com, or Sina's Weibo.com.

[weigeren]

No, you don't need a Chinese ID if you are foreigner --- it suggests you to give your passport number, but it is not compulsory .

Thank you for yourr tips, I have just created my account and I will have a look around. I'll post here any "really cool" findings I might have if they are really chinese learning related

[Lu]

'I've never used twitter but I'm sure it's rubbish' Yah. When you've never actually used it, it's hard to know what's actually on it, no? I follow some 90 people on twitter and apart from one lady who used to have a cooking column in a big newspaper, none of them write about what they eat. Lucky me, I must have found that elusive one percent.

OP: what kind of topics are you interested in? Weibo gives you a few categories to pick from when you sign up, you can just start from there. I've never had to give any kind of id number so far, not sure how they're going to handle foreigners on weibo or how they will avoid me just filling in my old passport number.

[Guest realmayo]

As the article says, no one knows how it will work after March 16. There can't be some exemption for foreigners, otherwise Chinese people would just say they were foreigners to avoid having to enter their details.

Presumably it will still be possible to have an account, just not to post anything.

[imron]

Although not immediately obvious, that article was published *last* year (see the same author's follow up article here).

Basically the deadline came and went and everything just continued more or less as usual. Like many things in China, there are regulations and then there is what actually happens.

[Guest realmayo]

Oops, thanks for clearing that up Imron.

There's a real-name sign-up requirement for actually getting online being talked about now but I suppose that regulation might go the same way and anyway would obviously not only not apply to people outside China but also might be easier for foreigners to comply with if it was actually implemented.

[icebear]

@realmayo - it's a draft regulation, there's a lot of concern from Chinese industry about that so it's yet to be seen what the final regulation (let alone its implementation) will look like. For now one can sign up anonymously for Weibo.

[imron]

Oops, thanks for clearing that up Imron.

I'd blame cnet-asia. Presumably to make sure their content never gets outdated, they've simply decided not to include the publishing date on articles

[li3wei1]

It sounds like the type of thing that, if they did implement it, it would take a few nanoseconds for the weibo community to find a workaround, so they aren't bothering.

[dnevets]

Has anyone had any problems trying to use (Sina) weibo outside of China? I'm in the UK, registered yesterday and it seemed to be working fine, but today it says my username is not registered / can't be found etc... Any particular reason? I still have the 'congratulations, your account has opened successfully!' email but clicking on the links in that email doesn't help either - same error message.

[YamiiSan]

I got a weibo recently.. and I would like to get to know some new people on me, so anyone who wants can find me Catz93

[heifeng]

Hmm. Maybe I am missing something in the 3 minutes I spent trying to register for a weibo account....how do I get past the text message verification if I am not in China? (other then sending the verification to someone who is.....)