Beauty pulpit for showbiz celebrities

Last month, the most popular Chinese micro blog post was written by movie star Fan Bingbing (or one of her ghostwriters) in which she said that she would draw three lucky winners from among the netizens forwarding her post. These three lucky fans would be given her photo calendars, and she would personally follow them on weibo, China's micro blog. Within days, the post was liked by more than 53,000, forwarded by 364,000 and commented on by 283,000 netizens.

Weibo is very popular in China, because it gives almost everyone a platform to read and write, even when one does not enjoy writing much. Surely, 140 words are not all that much. At the very least one could forward a post with a simple click.

Weibo has become a microcosm of Chinese society. I have been observing what kind of people get read and what kind of posts become viral because, in my obsession with the anthropology of technology, I think it is a good way to check the pulse of Chinese society.