Sina Weibo Targets New Users Outside China, Now Lets You Sign Up Via Facebook

It’s always been really tough for anyone outside of China to sign up for Sina Weibo, the nation’s hottest social network. The situation only got worse at the start of last year as authorities clamped down on rumors (and free speech) on Weibo by forcing Sina to implement real-name sign-up. But now Sina Weibo is making things a bit easier for people outside of China by permitting signing up for it via a Facebook account.

The Facebook login option can be seen on hk.weibo.com after clicking on the grey ‘register’ button on the top-right. I notice it’s replicated on the Taiwanese version of the Weibo homepage. But I’m unable to find the same option on english.sina.com/weibo, which is aimed at the North America market. Needless to say, mainland Chinese netizens don’t get this option.

This Facebook-Weibo hook-up was spotted by the startup team that makes Surround app, which is a third-party Weibo app that features machine translation of Chinese tweets posted to the service. The guys at Surround have verified that the Facebook connection works well for Weibo.

Sina Weibo briefly rolled out a partial English interface for its web app at the start of the year, but that later disappeared. The official Weibo mobile apps for iOS and Android retain an English language UI. (Update: Amended headline to clarify this is aimed at people outside mainland China).