You shall not pass! Sina Weibo will ban and silence accounts that push users towards WeChat

Much has been written over the past few years about the battle between Sina Weibo and Tencent’s WeChat. They may be radically different services – the former is a microblogging platform, the latter is a mobile chat app – but they’re still competing for the time and mindshare of China’s social media users. Most of the competition has been indirect, but now Sina is reportedly firing a shot across Tencent’s bow by threatening to silence Weibo accounts that promote their WeChat accounts to followers.

According to TechWeb, Sina Weibo announced late on Tuesday that Weibo accounts publicizing and promoting WeChat public accounts (the accounts favored by companies and public figures that can broadcast to large numbers of people) may be subject to being silenced or even having their Weibo accounts shut down. Offenders have until noon on Wednesday to avoid punishment by removing any offending materials, which might include promotional background images, WeChat follower services being provided on Weibo, and more.

Sina is also encouraging users to report other users they see violating this policy.

Some analysts see the move as retribution for a change WeChat made earlier this week that blocked some Kuaidi Dache functionality. Sina is not directly invovled with Kuaidi Dache, but the two companies share a common investor in Tencent rival Alibaba. Still, it may be more likely that the change is just an attempt by Sina to be sure companies aren’t using their Weibo accounts to guide users away from Weibo.

(Source: Techweb)