The Sina Weibo App is Very, Very Addictive!

The real-name saga is ongoing in China, but I’m still able to tweet via Sina Weibo through its iPhone app. I have to admit that the real-name controversy keeps me going back to Weibo recently to check if the rule has been enforced or if I really need to put in my real identity. So while on the app I’m either weibo-ing or gaming.

Its iPhone app is like a mini social mobile gaming center. The games are pretty straight forward, much like the games you play on Mobage or GREE. But the ease of social communication makes it special. I usually weibo and then head over to the game section and then back to weibo. My favorite game is poker, which is usually fast and quite addictive to play. The Three Kingdom game looks interesting but is slow to load for me.

I’m also pretty impressed by how Sina Weibo has evolved along the way, adding more features to make the service more rich and meaty, but yet not cluttered. With mobile games and also pages for brands, Sina Weibo now looks more like a Facebook than a Twitter, if you really must compare it with Western services. It makes me wonder if Twitter might have plans to do something similar. Sina Weibo is better than Twitter in many ways. The only thing that kept me staying on Twitter is my friends.

The Sina Weibo iPhone app is more than just weibo and games, though. Below are two other features that I find myself coming back to:

1. Most commented/reposted: Tapping on this feature allows you to see all the weibos/tweets which are the most commented/reposted. If you don’t know what to do when you’re stuck in a taxi, reading the comments is a sure way to suck up your time and also keep yourself updated.

2. WeiboApps: There’s an app store within the app, and it isn’t just promoting Sina’s apps. That’s also one of the places I go to check for the latest and coolest app in China.

It is also worth mentioning the Microdata feature which helps to analyze your weibo influence.

So that’s a brief run through on the features on Sina Weibo iPhone. Of course, as with Twitter, there are third-party alternative apps for Weibo that you might prefer, offering a more minimal UI – and in one case an English interface.

If you’re curious about what’s going on in China, Sina Weibo is one of best avenues to explore. While the app interface is in English, the content is 99.99 percent in Chinese. So it’s still very much a Chinese-language-only experience, unfortunately.