I saw the news today that Tencent Weibo had started allowing sign-ups through invitation codes, so I immediately went looking for one. There was actually quite a lot of information about invites on Google, but most of the codes people had posted were already used. Some pages did leave QQ group numbers behind, so I joined two of them.
There were a lot of people in those groups asking for invites, and it really felt like there were far more people waiting than codes available. It seemed like most of the day’s invites had already been handed out, so all I could do was wait. Some people might have better luck searching on Twitter, but the few accounts I found claiming to have invites were all fake. Posting bogus invite messages just to fool people is unbelievably pointless.
Then around one in the afternoon, someone suddenly shared a link that looked like an invitation link. I clicked it almost casually, and to my surprise it actually worked. The registration page said I was eligible to sign up. I really didn’t expect it to be valid, but it was, so of course I rushed to register right away.
I originally wanted to use the name “weisay,” since I use that as the domain name for my other microblog accounts, including Twitter. But when I tried to register with weisay, it wouldn’t let me. At first I assumed someone else had already taken it, so I registered with “weisayok” instead. After the registration was complete, I opened the Tencent Weibo page for weisay and found that it said nobody was using it. That was strange. If the name wasn’t taken, why couldn’t I register it? In the end I gave up and just kept weisayok.
Big thanks to Icy-5210 for sending me the invite. I still can’t invite anyone else yet, and I have no idea when that feature will become available to me. It looks like I may need to gather a certain number of followers first, and right now I barely have any audience there at all.
The current obsession with invitation codes is really just about getting in early and trying something new. Amazingly, some people are even selling invite codes on Taobao, which is a bit ridiculous. From what I’ve heard, the service is supposed to enter public beta by the end of this month, and once that happens, this whole invite frenzy probably won’t feel nearly as intense.
For QQ users, downloading the latest version of QQ is enough to access Tencent Weibo directly through the QQ client. There still doesn’t seem to be a version released for TM yet.
As for the client itself, the interface feels smooth and easy to use. Reading the latest posts, checking replies, and publishing updates all flow together naturally. Everything can be done directly inside QQ, which basically brings the whole microblogging experience into the QQ client. For people who already spend a lot of time in QQ, that makes it especially convenient.