Page 88 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Feasibility Study of New Media Technology
on Constructing Online Public Sphere

In February 2011, the number of registered users on Tencent Weibo reached more

than 100 million (Tencent Tech, 2011). However, although Tencent Weibo was developed
with great expectations and was even positioned as an important social media platform in
China, at Tencent 2015 annual meeting, Tencent Weibo was referred to as an essential
service and that ‘we need to give way to develop WeChat’ (Wang, 2014). This message
showed that, over the past few years, Tencent Weibo never caught up with its competi-

tor, Sina Weibo, and this niche product finally reached the end of its mission.

3.4 Comparison of different online platforms

As shown in Table 2, compared with other online platforms, Weibo has the wid-

est range of communication patterns. It includes all three communication modes: ‘one
to one’, ‘one to many’ and ‘many to many’. Even with a text limit of 2,000 words, the
content displayed on Weibo covers all categories of topics and focuses more on latest
news and hot issues. In terms of user relationship, acquaintance exists in most SNS

and IM platforms, while strangers are mostly gathered by shared interests or opinions.
Overall, among the existing online platforms, Weibo has developed into a very mature
ICT application with high immediacy and strong interactivity, which enhances its po-
tential of becoming an online public sphere in China.

Table 2. A comparison of different online platforms

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