Stephen Hawking gets a million followers within 6 hours on his new Weibo account
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Loading... - Agnes Lehnert
- 14 Apr 2020
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Famous theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has over a million fans on his Weibo account, within mere hours of it going live on Tuesday on the Chinese Twitter-like site.
The world-renowned British scientist's first and only post up on the site is in English and Chinese, where he says: "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."
He signed off the post with "S.H.", and the account notes that it is jointly managed by the professor himself and a team of social marketers from LA-based media firm Stradella Road.
Many of the 200,000 comments he received on the post were welcoming, with people saying "Thank you for your contribution to mankind" and "I love you."
The comments on Weibo are ranked by how many upvotes they have, so many at the top are warnings to other Chinese netizens not to "embarrass" China with frivolous questions. Still, several ranked at the top asked Hawking questions like, "When will I get a girlfriend?" and "Are there aliens?" — although it's entirely possible that the latter was asked in seriousness.
Some netizens took Hawking's presence on Weibo as a triumphant move over Facebook, which is seen as a "foreign" service trying to enter China. Some expressed hope that his account will help pull more visitors outside China to Weibo, while preventing Chinese users from leaving the site for Facebook or Twitter.
It appears Hawking does not have a Twitter account. His official Facebook page, which has over 3 million fans, was set up in Oct. 2014 and is also managed by Stradella Road.
