Entrepreneur, online celebrity Luo Yonghao to quit all social platforms

Chinese entrepreneur and internet celebrity Luo Yonghao announced he was quitting all social platforms on his Weibo account on Sunday midnight.

He recalled that it had been 13 years since he posted his first message on micro-blogging platform Sina Weibo on Sept 7, 2009, and said he would devote himself to a new round of entrepreneurship from Monday.

Luo hinted that he had done an interview with media outlet Late Post and more details on this decision will be released on Monday afternoon by Late Post.

Luo got 17.74 million followers and 41.65 million reposts, comments and thumbs-up on his official Weibo account, and his title on Weibo is CEO of smartphone brand Smartisan Technology.

Luo Yonghao, born in 1972 in Jilin province, Northeast China, used to be a star teacher of New Oriental Education & Technology, where he started his career as an English teacher in 2001.

Five years later he quit New Oriental and founded his own tech firm Bullog.cn. Luo founded Smartisan Technology and launched Smartisan smartphone along with its operating system in 2012. Smartisan launched Bullet Message, a messaging app to rival WeChat in 2018, but it failed to sustain its initial success.

Slipping into deep financial turmoil with debt-ridden Smartisan, Luo entered livestreaming industry in 2020 to earn money and tried to pay back the debt of about 600 million yuan ($94.26 million).

Luo indicated he would like to return to tech industry after paying back all the debt in 2022 and his new entrepreneurial endeavor will be a "metaverse company" on his Weibo account on Oct 19 last year.