World-renowned scientist Stephen Hawking has opened his official Weibo account — Weibo being China's version of Twitter — and attracted a million of followers within hours of going live.
In Hawking's first post, written in both English and Chinese, he narrated his travel experiences to China before he was permanently confined to his wheelchair due to degenerative motor neuron disease.
"My first trip was in 1985 when I travelled across your remarkable country by train. In my physical travels, I have only been able to touch the surface of your fascinating history and culture. But now I can communicate with you through social media," Hawking wrote.
The famous scientist has disclosed that his Weibo account is jointly managed by himself and Stradella Road, an L.A.-based social marketing agency. Hawking's official Facebook page, which was set up in October 2014, is also managed by the same team.
Hawking's Weibo post has generated more than 200,000 comments, mostly praising the astrophysicist for his "positive contribution to humankind." Weibo comments are ranked based on upvotes, so it is not surprising that a lot of top commenters warn against trolls and spammers. Chinese netizens appeal to other commenters to "try not to embarrass China" and avoid bombarding Hawking's page with thoughtless queries.
In a country where Facebook and similar social networking sites are still blocked, Chinese netizens celebrate Hawking's attempt to reach out to the local audience through Weibo. They are hopeful that Hawking will draw more visitors outside of China and convince existing Weibo users to stay.
Sina Weibo has more than 500 million registered users, and 222 million of these accounts are active. China's censorship practices have prevented Facebook, Twitter, even Google to fully penetrate and saturate the Mainland market. A number of high-profile CEOs and politicians, including Apple's Tim Cook and British Prime Minister David Cameron, have recently registered to Weibo in an attempt to reach out to the ever-increasing number of Chinese users.
