[jpalley]

While at its inception Weibo was a "twitter clone with Chinese characteristics"; it most certainly is not. IMHO, and in the opinion of everyone I talk to who has access to both, Weibo has created a "Microblog experience" that is fundamentally different (and for many more engaging) than twitter.

For example, Weibo has included inline images and videos from the get go - making your weibo stream a cross between twitter and pinterest. They have "badges", "real time chat" and other features found in other SNS applications but adapted to the microblog format. Their iPad app is beautiful - flipboard for the "microblog" format. And so on.

If you look at how people use the services, I think you'll find that Weibo users spend more time engaging with the platform than Twitter users. Its an all engrossing source of digital information, content and entertainment.

For anyone looking to put a "stream" into their app (which we are working on) its very interesting to explore the experiences and choices of both. They are not the same.

Having said that, Twitter has a far more open and accessible API and yes, it goes without saying, its not censored.

[seanmcdirmid]

They've definitely piled on the features for weibo to suit the Chinese audience; most of this innovation is local. The nice thing about Twitter was its simplicity, that you don't have to load pics in the tweets you receive, that the visual design is simple, and you don't have any pointless reputation side games to distract you. Weibo goes and adds those features, I don't think it makes it better than twitter in anyway, although it is definitely different.

Couple that with the fact that 140 ideographic Chinese characters is much more information than a 140 phoentic letters (say 1.5, 2 times as much) along with threaded discussions, and weibo begins to look more like full on social networking than just microblogging. The way weibo has bitten into Kaixin and Renren is evidence of that.

However, I wouldn't call "Weibo" more than a Twitter clone until they are allowed to compete head-to-head with Twitter by the Chinese government. Weibo is simply Twitter in China because Twitter isn't allowed to exist.