What Is Weibo? Chinese Site Crashes After Popstar Luhan Announces Girlfriend

Luhan, a Chinese popstar, crashed the social media platform Weibo on Sunday after announcing he has a new girlfriend.

Luhan went on Weibo to introduce his new “girlfriend @ Guan Xiaotong,” who is a popular Chinese actress. The post had been shared more than 5,164,000 times by Tuesday afternoon.

The post sent Weibo’s traffic to levels it had never reached, paralyzing some of its servers, according to reports. Approximately 30 minutes later, the platform’s customer service team said engineers were trying to fix issues that did not allow some users to refresh their feed or load comments or pages. The problem was resolved about four hours later.

Luhan’s post received much more attention than the current most-liked tweet by former President Barack Obama. Obama’s tweet posted in August has more than 1,713,000 retweets and more than 4,607,000 likes.

The heartthrob who paralyzed Weibo’s servers is a former member of the Chinese-Korean pop band EXO. Luhan is very popular and has worked with Matt Damon in the movie “The Great Wall.” Damon reportedly even said that he was impressed by Luhan’s popularity.

“I think the first night where we started shooting there was something like 400 flower arrangements that came to the hotel and took up the entire hallway," Damon said in an interview about the young singer.

Luhan, 27, and his girlfriend Xiaotong, 20, worked together in the Chinese drama series “Sweet Combat.” Some said the announcement was made to promote the series, saying the relationship is “fake.”

Guan replied to his post with a heart and his post was reportedly also reblogged by his label.

“Must be the publicity of the TV series. definitely is,” said one user.

“tell the truth, you say my girlfriend I believe, but you say that their choice of girlfriend is Guan Xiaotong I do not believe,” said another.

Many went on Weibo to speak against the relationship, and were especially harsh towards the young actress. However, there were some nice comments about the new couple.

Users on Twitter also talked about Luhan’s announcement.

“I’m so proud of LuHan for being brave to announce on his weibo that he has a girlfriend,” said one user. “I hope they will be happy and stay tgt for a long time.”

“We are SO happy to know that luhan has a girlfriend now, guan xiaotong! we hope they are happy and have a nice relationship,” said another.

What Is Weibo?

Weibo is the equivalent of Twitter in China. The site has 340 million monthly users and 154 million daily active users, Weibo said in March. Those figures are higher than Twitter, which has 328 million monthly active users.

There is a Weibo app for Apple’s App Store and Google Play Store, however the app only has one and a half stars on iTunes.