Why Sina Weibo is Winning the Game

This is a guest post by Nils Pihl, the co-founder of Mention LLC, an international consulting agency and software developer specializing in interfaces and game mechanics.

Not cloning. Evolution.

There are several reasons to frown at the success of Weibo. How does a product based on expression gain so much traction under censorship? It started off as a clone, poorly disguised, but quickly gave Twitter a run for its money. Weibo acquired millions of users at a rate that more than threatened the success story of Twitter, it was positively intimidating. With 140 million users at the end of the first quarter of 2011, and still growing rapidly, Weibo cannot be discarded as a mere clone anymore. Sina’s microblog is a phenomenom that deserves our attention, and that even Twitter could learn a lot from. Weibo did not become what it is today through mere cloning, but through evolution. Weibo is faster, stronger and extremely well-adapted to its own environment. This is the face of Chinese innovation.

To understand why Weibo has managed to engage so many people it is prudent to look at the game mechanics behind both Weibo and Twitter. There are of course several similarities to support the clone hypothesis, but the differences are very compelling.

The games behind microblogging

The most fundamental rewards of using either of the two microblogs is information and expression. By following other users you create a stream of rewarding information, entertainment and social interaction. This passive use case is arguably the most popular, with a fraction of the user base of these microblogs producing the vast majority of content. The more active users also find reward in expressing themselves through sharing news, trends, entertainment and commentary. These active users help create a desirable ecosystem for the passive users, and are the driving force behind the microblog concept. Although it is difficult to draw a line where a user becomes a passive or active user, both personas are needed to fuel the interaction that makes the microblog rewarding. As such, Weibo and Twitter are both interaction-dependent platforms.

The most characteristic game mechanic for both platforms though are the rules on how this interaction takes place: The length of posts allowed is limited. This holds especially true for Twitter, where the rules are particularly restricting. Some game design theorists note that it is imposing a restriction on an interaction that makes a game. These rules provide a challenge for the active user, which he or she might find rewarding. It also lowers the barrier to entry for creating content. The original blogging platforms required a lot of effort on the part of both the active and the passive users. It is important to note here that the constraints for post length can also work in favor for the passive user. The rewarding piece of the message is arrived at earlier, lowering the barrier to entry for the reader as well as for the poster.

The inherent challenge of UGC

Before we examine how Twitter and Weibo are different from each other I’d like to highlight some issues that both products face. Interaction-dependent products that need user generated content (UGC) all face the same inherent challenge. The balance between active and passive users is rather delicate, as it is important to maintain a good signal to noise ratio for the passive users. It is the social network iteration of that old game theory chestnut “The Tragedy of the Commons”. The limited resource in the case of social networks, whether it is Facebook, Youtube, Weibo or Myspace is user attention. The average user is only interested in a certain amount of input. As the balance of interaction moves towards the active spectrum the user will be harder and harder pressed to find the information he or she finds interesting. The user’s feed gets too crowded and the reward diminishes. The active user, wanting comments and attention, will post frequently to get the reward.

As the social networks grow this increasingly becomes a problem and filtering becomes paramount – either by the product itself or by proactive users. Maintaining a good signal to noise ratio in a social network can be very difficult. Myspace is one of the social networks that suffered greatly from this problem. Those who were avid users will remember the constant friend requests from people trying to get another listener or viewer. For many users meaningful interaction was replaced by a constant stream of noise. This is one of the reasons that Myspace all but died out as Facebook become more popular.

Where Weibo differs

Sina’s Weibo platform has a lot of things going for it. Whether by conscious design or sheer dumb luck they have implemented several features that strengthen their system of games. Many have been quick to point out that the starting premise of constrained messages is already a big difference in itself. You can express yourself much more with 140 characters in Chinese than you can in many other languagues. The possible drawback of this is of course that the signal to noise ratio could be harder to maintain, something that Sina is hoping to combat with intelligent filters. “It is considered rude in China not to follow someone you know,” a Sina employee told me. “I am following close to 1000 people now”. I don’t know if this holds true for the average Chinese user, but if there is any truth to it then filters will indeed have to play an important role in Weibo’s development.

Another important difference that drives user retention is that Weibo allows simple commenting on posts. The comments are displayed beneath the original post in a classic BBS fashion, and this facilitates social interaction and creates miniature loops of traffic generation.
But this is not the only difference. Weibo users are allowed to post images and video, even sound, directly into their Weibo feeds. If you upload an image it will even be automatically stamped with your user account. If a picture you posted goes viral, every viewer of that picture will see your user account. Furthermore, if a user decides to retweet your Weibo post, for lack of a better word, then that user is allowed to add an additional set of characters to the original post.

These rules are less restricting than those of Twitter, and it would seem Weibo has found a better balance. Studying the Alexa reports of both sites will show you that Weibo’s users are interacting with the product in a more loyal fashion than Twitter users are. More pageviews per user and more time spent on the site seem to indicate that Weibo has struck user-base gold. Weibo has constructed a microblog game with a more favorable exertion to reward ratio than Twitter and is reaping the rewards.

But Weibo has also tried their hand at more obvious game mechanics. Where Twitter only gives you a very limited set of metrics to encourage gameplay (followers vs follows, retweets and @mentions) Weibo is offering you value-added data on your traffic, badges for loyal use and the desirable V status.

Weibo might still have some way to go until they reach the sheer size of Twitter’s user base, but that should not distract you from the massive success that the platform has enjoyed. Weibo is the 8th most visited website in China, which really is its main market, and that’s the same ranking that Twitter enjoys in the US. Weibo might not become the international microblog of choice because of Chinese censorship, but it has already established itself as the winner in China, vastly outdoing other local competitors in terms of user retention, and Twitter would do well to look to the East for innovation.