Chinese microbloggers gaining fans fast as actress Yao Chen hits 12 million follower record

(AFP CHINA XTRA)

Twitter’s top microbloggers Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber should be on the look-out for award-winning Chinese actress Yao Chen.

She has become the first microblogger to soar past 12 million followers on the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, Sina Weibo, and continues to add fans to her total faster than her English counterparts.

The same can be said for many of China’s top Weibo users, the majority of whom now have more than 9 million fans.

The competition on Sina’s list of top Weibo users has been fierce during the week. Chinese actress Yang Mi’s fan count has eclipsed that of both Kevin Tsai and Xie Na’s to take third place in the chart. TV star Xie Na has snuck into fourth place, beating Taiwanese TV host Kevin Tsai by a just a few thousand fans.

Chinese actress Zhao Wei and TV host He Jiong both hit the 9 million fan milestone during the week while Chinese actor Chen Kun and American singer Taylor Swift surpassed 8 million fans.

In September 2010, Twitter had 175 million registered users, while Sina reports that Weibo had more than 200 million registered users in August 2011.

Most popular people on Twitter:

1. Lady Gaga (13,601,313 followers)
2. Justin Bieber (12,702,077)
3. Barack Obama (10,122,071)
4. Katy Perry (9,909,066)
5. Kim Kardashian (9,832,985)
6. Britney Spears (9,550,344)
7. Shakira (8,540,355)
8. Taylor Swift (8,029,068)
9. Ashton Kutcher (7,631,361)
10. Ellen DeGeneres (7,595,554)

Most popular people on Sina's microblog (Weibo):

1. Yao Chen (12,179,974 followers)
2. Dee Hsu (10,876,135)
3. Yang Mi (9,547,457)
4. Xie Na (9,540,566)
5. Kevin Tsai (9,536,261)
6. Zhao Wei (9,245,532)
7. He Jiong* (9,033,253)
8. Li Bingbing (8,636,075)
9. Chen Kun (8,056,784)
10. Huang Jianxiang (7,813,470)

http://twitter.com
http://weibo.com

*Relaxnews has been mistakenly reporting that Korean actor Jung Kyung Ho is the seventh most popular Weibo user due to a translation error. Chinese TV presenter He Jiong is the seventh most popular microblogger on Sina.