Sina Microblog Incorporates Web Search
Southern Metropolitan News, 5/23/12
Chinese internet company Sina's (Nasdaq: SINA) Weibo microblogging platform has quietly integrated web search, now providing website search links alongside relevant user, post, and group search results for a given search query.
For example, a search for the Chinese term "Lakers" not only provides related user, post and group results, but also links to Netease's (Nasdaq: NTES) sports portal, NBA China's website, and other sites related to the NBA team.
Other search queries produce similar results, with keywords highlighted in red and website results tagged with "Website." Each website result features the site's title, URL, time that it was shared by a Weibo user, those users' names, and number of times shared.
Weibo's web search function does not appear to resemble Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) or Google's web search engines, instead only providing shortened links shared by users.
Editor's Note: Marbridge attempted to reproduce the journalist's "Lakers" search but did not find any website results. However, if a user goes to Weibo's advanced search page, they can choose to search according to "original posts" (not including forwarded posts), "verified users," "images," "video," and "shortened links." By selecting "shortened links," users can obtain search results for shortened links shared by users.
Keywords: Internet Sina microblogging online search
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