2) Verified Accounts
In order to better understand verified accounts, we have to go back a little. Rumors regarding a government-driven “Real Name” policy started back in 2010/11, a highly anticipated series of actions to force all Chinese SNS users to associate real identities to their profiles. This policy was supposed to have two main goals: first of all, a better control over what people talk about on Weibos.
On the other hand, to continue the eternal fight against “zombies”, “phantoms” and other kinds of fake profiles on Weibo – to know more, you can read this post on China.org.
Although the process is currently in a development phase, it had an immediate impact on the way brand pages on Sina Weibo work: in order to have a verified brand page, every company needs to have a legal representative in China and receive a verification from Sina Corp. (as we’ve seen on a post about Verified Brand Pages on social media).
Especially nowadays, real identities are a serious issue for Sina Weibo: the verification system for personal accounts counts today 28 different categories, and 486 career-oriented personal certifications. They are available through a “self-service” request, followed by a verification and a subsequent certification by Sina’s operatives.