Sina Weibo which is seen as the Chinese version of Twitter, crashed after former Chinese-Korean pop band EXO member Lu Han announced his new girlfriend.
The Chinese singer and actor posted on the social media platform at noon on Sunday, writing in Chinese: "Hi everyone, let me introduce her to everyone - this is my girlfriend @Guan Xiaotong."
The moment drew heated discussion between fans. Most of them used Weibo to voice their displeasure, with some criticizing his choice and saying she's "fake." Many also suspected Lu Han's post is a marketing ploy to generate interest in the new drama the couple has filmed.
This message has been liked and commented more than millions of times, overwhelmed Weibo, beating Barack Obama's most liked tweet.
With Weibo's traffic soaring above to records level, this led to the site's crash only after half an hour of Lu Han's post.
Weibo said in a statement at 12.32pm that its engineers were working to handle the increased traffic, Lianhe Zaobao reported. Service resumed to around 2pm, and returned to normal at 4pm.
Weibo works similarly to Twitter, and has 340 million users, which is also about the same as Twitter. Fans also took the matter to Twitter to respond to Lu Han's announcement. However, more used Weibo to express their feelings.
Lu Han's stardom isn't to be underestimated because even Matt Damon was impressed.
Matt Damon and Lu Han filmed 'The Great Wall' together. During the press conference for the movie, Damon revealed that he was awed by Lu Han's popularity, saying, "I think the first night where we started shooting there was something like 400 flower arrangements that came to the hotel and took up the entire hallway."
