China’s foremost microblogging platform has dropped the “Sina” from its name and is now officially known as just “Weibo”.
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“Goodbye Sina Weibo, hello Weibo!” read a post on the official Weibo microblog on March 28, the day of the name swap.
Weibo’s logo and other promotional materials have been altered to reflect this change, which may have come for the sake of simplicity - particularly since the Twitter-like social media service has owned the www.weibo.com domain name since 2011.
The old logo (top) reads "Sina Weibo" in Chinese. The new logo (bottom) simply reads "Weibo". Photo: SCMP Pictures
Weibo may have also decided to shorten its name in preparation for entrance into the American stock market.
In early March, the microblog service filed to raise US$500 million through a US initial public offering.
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The phrase “weibo” literally means “microblog” in Putonghua, and Sina’s version has long been China’s most popular, with about 100 million messages posted each day.
