Reflections on the Origin and Growth of Sina's 'Weibo'

Older people often like to say, “I’ve watched so-and-so grow up since they were a child.” Although I am not particularly old, it’s no exaggeration for me to say that I’ve watched Sina Weibo grow up from its infancy.

Today, I happened to read Bing Shu’s (炳叔) commentary on Sina Weibo. He showered it with praise, which honestly felt a bit like overhyping. Still, for Sina Weibo to become what it is today was truly no small feat.

Let me share the backstory. Sina Weibo actually began as a plugin within an internet product that Sina never publicly released. Many who closely follow Sina’s interactive products might guess what it was: a project called “Sina Friends” (新浪朋友). It was a pure SNS product that went through nearly a year of iterative development. Just as it was about to launch, it was suddenly aborted. It wasn’t due to technical issues, but rather a sudden decision by Sina’s executive management. After a series of department restructuring and personnel changes, a product that met all launch standards was killed off in an instant. I couldn’t help but sigh at the time—the engineers’ hard work had vanished into thin air.

To get back to the point, Weibo was originally just an SNS plugin named “Record” (记录), designed for users to post status updates and exchange daily thoughts with friends. At the time, nobody thought much of this little plugin. Yet, to everyone’s surprise, with the cancellation of “Sina Friends”, the restructuring of the new department, and the birth of new strategic directions, “Record” seized the spotlight. It spun off on its own and evolved into the Sina Weibo we know today. This really makes one reflect: when some people work behind the scenes in service of others, they are ignored, undervalued, or easily overlooked. But once given the opportunity to stand on their own, they attract far more than just envious glances.

And so, the product was born. Of course, it was the result of a pivot and secondary development based on “Sina Friends.” In my view, Sina Weibo’s success was never much of a surprise, and comparing it to the failure of Tencent’s Taotao (滔滔) isn’t entirely fair—they simply had completely different starting points. For example, if I gather some wood with the sole intention of building a sturdy chair, and I succeed, it might not be the sturdiest chair ever made, but it’s perfectly usable. Meanwhile, someone else uses the same wood to build a bed. To a person who isn’t sleepy at all and just wants to sit down, the chair is a success compared to the bed. In reality, building a bed is much harder than building a chair, but very few people actually care about the behind-the-scenes difficulty. (PS: If that other person had built a sofa bed instead of a regular bed, maybe the chair wouldn’t have been the winner. The moment people saw the sofa bed unfold, many would probably have hailed it as a masterpiece.)

In today’s internet companies, whoever has the best operational and marketing strategy takes home the prize. From beginning to end, developers are often treated as mere blue-collar carpenters doing heavy lifting. However, I believe one thing is often overlooked: on the road to Web 2.0 success, there isn’t just a single exit at the finish line. In fact, there are many different paths to success (given a solid operational foundation). It’s not like you only succeed today because you cloned Twitter; had you built YouTube back then, you might have succeeded just as well. But all of these paths are just walking in others’ footsteps. At best, you are a follower, hijacking the creativity of the pioneers.

From both a product and technical perspective, taking this safe path does not help product managers or developers significantly grow their personal abilities. On the contrary, they get comfortable in this greenhouse, and the moment the greenhouse disappears, they are bound to wither and die. While drawing nutrients from elsewhere is perfectly fine, wouldn’t it be better to become a resilient flower that adapts and thrives on its own? Financial gains and interests are always fleeting, but your abilities remain yours forever.