China Anoints a New Most-Followed Celebrity, Way Ahead of Liu Xiang, Lady Gaga

The Tencent Weibo page of He Jiong - now the most 'followed' person on the planet.

With the huge rise in popularity of microblogging in China, it’s sometimes overlooked that there isn’t just one Twitter-like service, but actually dozens. While Sina’s Weibo tends to grab all the headlines, it’s Tencent’s service that rules the roost in terms of users – and also in terms of having the most-followed celebrity in the world. And now there’s a new global social media star who has leapt over the former number one, Olympic hurdler Liu Xiang, with a staggering 26.9 million followers. It’s TV star He Jiong.

Yes, he’s not well-known outside of China, but the 37-year old performer has become an entertainment show mainstay within the country, backed up by a singing career and some supporting roles in pretty big movies. Plus, he has hidden depths, being fluent in Arabic (which was his major at university and where he remains as a part-time lecturer). Whatever the appeal, He Jiong currently has 8.5 million more followers on Tencent Weibo than Lady Gaga, the provocative pop star who’s currently Twitter’s biggest hit.

Here’s the current top three on Tencent’s microblog service:

Like many celebrities, Mr. He is on both Tencent’s (HKG:0700) and Sina’s (NASDAQ:SINA) service but is apparently more popular on Tencent Weibo. This is a testament to how active the Shenzhen-based web giant has been in bringing stars – including foreign footballers – onto its own Weibo. And indeed we see on He Jiong’s homepage background – see it here – that Tencent Games is a sponsor of his, so perhaps his rise to the top is not entirely coincidental and there might well have been some PR dollars guiding him up the rankings. Or it could just be because it’s the holidays, and lots of people are now seeing him on TV. Just a few days ago he was kidding around with basketball demi-god Shaquille O’Neal on a Chinese New Year regional TV gala:

Just two days ago we saw China’s microbloggers smash another record. This time over on Sina’s Weibo.com, users destroyed the tweets-per-second world record with all their festive missives sent as the Year of the Dragon was welcomed in on Sunday night.

[Images of He Jiong and Shaq from Yahoo CN]