Encouraging Social Sharing in China

11-01-2012

I recently spent a month in China, where access to Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus are blocked. I’ve always known about the Great Firewall, but I never really thought about how it can affect content-sharing that I have grown used to over the past years.

I have been using @octopress for blogging. Octopress has built-in sharing function for Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus. But none of it works in China. To encourage social sharing, I add basic support for Sina Weibo.

• Weibo share button, on the bottom of the blog entry, allows users to easily share the url. It also displays how many times the entry has been shared.
• A follow button (and follower count) on the side bar for Weibo.

Here is the source code: Octopress Sina Weibo

I hope more people will implement social-sharing for Chinese audience.

Here is the developer platform for Sina Weibo, only in Chinese.