{"id":9933,"date":"2011-08-09T05:08:08","date_gmt":"2011-08-09T05:08:08","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-08-09T05:08:08","modified_gmt":"2011-08-09T05:08:08","slug":"Chinese-micro-bloggers-pay-cash-for-followers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=9933","title":{"rendered":"Chinese micro-bloggers pay cash for followers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Chinese craze for micro-blogging has reached such dizzying heights that companies are now offering to help people boost their following and stand out from the crowd — for a price.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Why use our services?” one company called Yangcheng Media asks on its website. “Who would you follow? Somebody with 2,000 followers or 20,000 followers? The answer is easy: most people have a herd mentality.”<\/p>\n

The firm offers up 100 followers for just one yuan (US$0.15), <\/strong>in a bid to make users of China’s popular Twitter-like weibo services stand out from the pack.<\/p>\n

Micro-blogging is hugely popular in China<\/strong>, where other more traditional media such as newspapers are heavily censored. As with Twitter, people with huge amounts of followers achieve a much sought-after type of cyber-standing.<\/p>\n

The number of weibo users more than tripled from January to June this year alone, reaching nearly 195 million<\/strong> — roughly equal to Brazil’s population — according to the semi-official China Internet Information Center.<\/p>\n

And this number may continue to rise.<\/strong> By the end of June, there were a total of 485 million Chinese online users, more than half of whom are not yet sending weibo bursts of about 150 Chinese characters each.<\/p>\n

One company called Gaodeding — which translates as “Yes We Can!” — goes a step further, offering weibo addicts a package of 20 active followers for one yuan<\/strong>, according to a man surnamed Liu who works at the firm.<\/p>\n

Active followers are people who update their accounts daily, rather than so-called “corpses” who seldom post or spread information from netizens they follow.<\/p>\n

Source AFP<\/em>
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