China Digital
The World of Weibo Verification: Options to Verify Accounts on Sina Weibo
In an online world of ‘fake news’ and online scams, it is sometimes hard to know what and who is real on social media. This is especially true in China, which has an online population of over 770 million, of which more than 350 million people are active monthly users of Sina Weibo.
As the user base of China’s social media has seen a staggering growth, it has become more important for businesses, brands, celebrities, or other accounts of public interest, to get verified to show netizens they are authentic. This adds credibility and trust to an account – generally increasing the number of followers and influence.
Weibo has a somewhat complicated variety of options to verify accounts, all leading to that one goal of authentication: a ‘V’ on the account page. All of Weibo’s celebrities, Key Opinion Leaders or ‘KOLs’, and a myriad of companies and micro-bloggers, now have that desirable ‘V’ on their account.
That little ‘V’ is of great importance; it even led to the widespread popularization of the term “Big Vs” (大V), referring to those verified and influential accounts on Chinese social media.
Since Weibo’s online support for verification processes are rather chaotic and scattered around, we’ve created this guide for you. (Click here to enlarge.)
- Individual verification is free.
- All users need to bind their phone number and upload a clear profile photo.
- ‘Golden verification’ is only awarded to most popular accounts on Weibo.
- A contract grass root media account gets more privileges on media content, which include:
- Paid Articles: allowing readers to pay to read your articles;
- Article Notifications: followers will get notified via PM when a new article is published;
- Allow users to follow an account from inside a video;
- “Original work” option (similar to “original content” on WeChat in which a special tag clarifies that content is verified as being unique and not infringing on copyright);
- Drive users to continue reading an article.
It’s important to remember that Weibo only charges organizations for verification so there are a lot more options, which we have listed below.
For a so-called ‘Blue V’ verification, which is awarded to verified businesses, there are three levels and it includes benefits in 6 different categories:
- Basic Services
- Promotion
- Events
- Coupons
- Private Messages
- Data Analysis & Social Listening
1. Basic Services
A purchase of the Blue verification will give you a banner image slider on the homepage, on the top of your post feeds. You can insert up to 5 images and 1 video.
2. Promotion
Weibo’s promotion tools are essential for any brand looking to boost engagement and grow their account.
Basic plan users will experience some restrictions in utilizing the campaign and promotion tools. If you would like to run campaigns on Weibo, we recommend you buy a medium plan and ideally splash out for the 9,800 RMB Advanced plan if you’re a heavy user of fensi toutiao (粉丝头条, ‘fan headlines’: option to push post to top of newsfeed of followers).
3. Event Platform
Weibo offers 6 types of event promotions:
- Wheel of Fortune: spin to win a prize or red packet.
- Flash Sales: limited time offers inside Weibo.
- Repost to enter a lucky draw.
- UGC: reward users who post your campaign on their Weibo with a prize.
- Pre-order: similar to how Apple lets people pre-order iPhones.
- Request a Sample: users fill out a form to get a free sample.
4. Coupons
Coupons are a great way to entice users to follow your account and give a little nudge to those with demonstrated intent to purchase.
5. Private Messages
Private messages are almost a direct copy of WeChat’s articles. The basic plan – bizarrely enough – only lets you send them to a random 10% of your follower base and has other restrictions on menus and auto-replies.
6. Data Analysis & Social Listening
This is not to be confused with Weibo’s “data helper” (数据助手), which costs an additional 6,800 RMB/year, although medium and advanced plans can get a discount on it.
Overseas brands need to pay $1000 to apply for organization verification. Detailed information can be found at Weibo’s Support Page. If you do not want to worry about all of these details, KAWO’s team can help you get a better reporting experience.
Some final remarks about Weibo verification. There are also many organizations that just get individual verification status, and those that do not even bother getting verified at all.
While it is true that ‘Blue V’ gives an organization instant authority and credibility as an official account, trust and authenticity can also be built up through consistent posting, a formal tone of writing, and professional quality content. One good example is Penguin Market, an online import food and lifestyle seller with 50k+ followers. Their account has remained ‘unverified’, yet they have succeeded in becoming and staying popular. Before spending time and money on a Blue V-status, it is, therefore, worthwhile to consider if a free verification may be sufficient to meet your needs.
Adding to that; non-Blue V accounts actually can also purchase the RMB 5000 and 9800 packages. It took us wuite some research of all the Weibo documentation to find out that non-verified users can also purchase the same service pack. It does, however, carry a different name: “Super Fans Package” (超级粉丝包) – sounds just as good.
KAWO connects teams across the globe providing data insights, greater transparency, and increased efficiency. We help international brands in China be more authentic and consistent on social media.
Interested to learn more? Schedule a free demo.
China Digital
Cybersecurity Experts Warn: Flicking the V-Sign in Photos Could Give Away Your Fingerprint Data
V-sign selfie pictures could disclose personal information about your fingerprints, security experts warn.
The 2019 China Cybersecurity Week was held in Shanghai this week, and made it to the top trending topics on Sina Weibo today.
The topic attracting the attention of millions of Chinese web users is not China’s cybersecurity in general, but one that was discussed during the event, namely the potential privacy risks in making a V-sign on photos.
Chinese internet security experts at the conference warned that people are unaware that they could be giving away personal data information about their fingerprints when sharing photos of themselves making a peace sign.
If the side of the fingertips is facing the camera, and if there is not a lot of space in between the camera and the hand, it would potentially be possible to gather fingerprint data using photo enlargement tools and AI techniques.
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez.
The deputy director of the Shanghai Information Security Industry Association stated that photos displaying a fingertop-facing V-sign taken within 1,5 meter of the camera could potentially disclose 100% of one’s fingerprint information, China Press reports.
A booth at the conference giving information about fingerprint information leaking through V-sign photos. Photo via China Press.
Criminals could reconstruct fingerprint patterns of other people and abuse them in various means – basically wherever fingerprint information is used to confirm people’s identities (e.g. biometric door locks or fingerprint payment scanning).
Image via 台海网络广播电视台.
Besides not disclosing fingerprint information in photos posted online, experts also warn people not to leave fingerprint information at machines without confirming their purpose and legality.
Fingerprint scanning is used for a multitude of purposes in China. Foreigners who arrived in China since 2017 will also be familiar with the policy of collecting foreign passport holders’ fingerprints upon their arrival in the PRC.
On Chinese social media, the topic “Making a V-Sign Could Leak Your Fingerprint Data” is one of the biggest being discussed today. On Weibo, the hashtag has gathered 200 million views at time of writing (#拍照比剪刀手会泄露指纹信息#).
Some commenters advise people on social media to make peace signs with the nail side of the fingers facing the camera. (That gesture, however, is deemed an offensive gesture in some nations.)
The V-sign is often used as a rather non-symbolic or cute gesture across in East Asia.
Although in many Western countries, the symbol is mostly known as the victory sign (“V for Victory”) as used during World War II, it entered mainstream popular culture in Japan since the 1960s and spread to other Asian countries from there.
This Time article explains how the gesture appeared in Japanese manga in the late 1960s, one of them titled V is the Sign (Sain wa ‘V’ / サインはV).
Amid the concerned Weibo users, some are not worried: “It’s ok,” one commenter writes: “Using a Beauty App smoothes out my skin anyway.”
There are also many commenters who are confused about the news, wondering what advanced photo camera quality and AI technique might implicate for future privacy risks concerning face recognition data and iris scanning software (“Should we also close our eyes?”).
Others offer a different solution to the unexpected V-sign issue: “Just flip the middle finger instead.”
By Manya Koetse
Follow @whatsonweibo
The images used in the featured image on this page come from 追星娱乐说.
Spotted a mistake or want to add something? Please let us know in comments below or email us. Please note that your comment below will need to be manually approved if you’re a first-time poster here.
©2019 Whatsonweibo. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce our content without permission – you can contact us at info@whatsonweibo.com
China Digital
“Taobao Life”: This Feature Shows How Much Money You’ve Spent on Taobao
Some users just found out they could’ve bought a house with the money they’ve spent on Taobao.
Over the past few days, a new Taobao feature that allows users to see how much money they have spent on the online shopping platform is flooding Chinese social media.
Taobao Marketplace is China’s biggest online shopping platform. Owned by tech giant Alibaba, Taobao was launched in 2003 to facilitate consumer-to-consumer retail.
For many people, Taobao shopping has become part of their everyday life. Whether it is clothes, pet food, accessories, electronics, furniture – you name it, Taobao has it.
Because buying on Taobao is so easy, fast, and convenient, many online consumers lose track of how much they actually spent on the platform – especially if they have been using it for years already.
Thanks to “Taobao Life,” users can now see the total amount of money spent on their account.
How to do it? First: go to Taobao settings and click the profile account as indicated below.
Image by whatsonweibo.com
Then click the top icon that says “Achievement” (成就).
Image by whatsonweibo.com
And here you find what you have spent in this account in total. On the left: the money spent, on the right: the amount of purchases.
Image by whatsonweibo.com
Since I’ve used started using this Taobao account for the occasional clothes shopping since 2016, I’ve made 122 purchases, spending 7849 yuan ($1140) – a very reasonable amount compared to some other Taobao users, who are now finding out they could have practically bought an apartment with the money they have spent on Taobao.
This user, for example, found out they spent over half a million yuan on Taobao ($75,500).
Image via whatsonweibo.com
This user below has spent over 1,1 million yuan on Taobao ($170,000).
Some people discuss all the things they could have bought with the money they have spent on Taobao over the years: “As soon as I saw the number, I wanted to cry,” one Weibo user writes: “What have I done?!”
Another person, finding out they have spent 230,000 yuan on Taobao ($33,400), writes: “This can’t be true! Surely this must be a mistake!?”
“If I wouldn’t have spent all this money on Taobao, I would’ve been rich,” others say.
The topic of Taobao’s total spending amount has become so popular on Chinese social media this week, causing so much consternation, that Taobao posted a message on its Weibo account on July 27, writing: “We heard you guys couldn’t sleep last night..”
Although many people are shocked to find out the money they’ve spent on Taobao, others console themselves with the thought that adding up everything they have spent on Taobao, they were actually ‘rich’ at some point in their lives.
By Manya Koetse , with contributions from Miranda Barnes
Follow @whatsonweibo
Spotted a mistake or want to add something? Please let us know in comments below or email us. Please note that your comment below will need to be manually approved if you’re a first-time poster here.
©2019 Whatsonweibo. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce our content without permission – you can contact us at info@whatsonweibo.com
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amy
April 5, 2018 at 9:53 am
I’ve been unable to use Weibo for a few months, since they asked me to verify my account but I don’t use a mobile. Now I’m unable to post anything or fwd things :/