By Herman Lai, posted Mar 7, 2011 at 10:35 AM, 282 views,

Sina Releases Location-Based Service For Weibo Users

Sina, the major web portal in China recently launched a location based service called “WeiLingDi”, roughly means “Micro Territory.” Aiming to get its micro-blog (Weibo) users into this new service by using celebrity endorsement with its “Star News” feature.

Users can check-in at different places and get badges, just like Foursquare. But also letting users to rate the places, those information will be shared to users follower in Sina Weibo.

The idea of bundles up the service with Weibo users is brilliant. Sina Weibo has over 60,000 verified accounts, in which included celebrities, sports stars and other VIPs, therefore ,followers can find out what the stars are up to and whereabouts, which they called it the “Star News”. The top 100 users themselves have over 180 million followers.

Foursquare and the other social network websites are unable to climb over China’s great wall at the moment. But there’s rumor saying it is interested in acquiring Jiepang, China’s most popular location-based service.

Source: TNW