Fanfou, (饭否) the earliest notable weibo service (weibo (微博) is the Chinese word for "microblog"), was launched in Beijing on May 12, 2007, by the co-founder of Xiaonei (Renren) Wang Xing (王兴). The website's layout, API, and mode of use was highly similar to Twitter, which was created earlier in 2006.
After the July 2009 Ürümqi riots, the Chinese government shut down most of the domestic weibo services, including Fanfou and Jiwai. Many popular non China-based microblogging services such as Twitter have been blocked since then. Sina.com's CEO Charles Chao considered it to be an opportunity.
Sina launched Sina Weibo on August 14, 2009. Its executives invited and persuaded many Chinese celebrities to join the service, which led to strong growth in user numbers.
