The Weibo accounts hosted by Sina, Sohu, NetEase and Tencent will require real name and ID number registration from all users by March 16th, with unregistered users to be denied posting and forwarding capabilities. The announcement was made at the Beijing Weibo Development Management Regulations Seminar held today in Beijing. more ›

Wow. All that speculation, the flirtation, the obsession, but we never thought it would actually happen. Could it be true? According to Sohu and others, yes it could, and probably is. Following all the rumors and Mark Zuckerberg's recent trip to China, Facebook has now reportedly signed a deal with Baidu. more ›

• Well, hello! Steven Millward of Sinobytes talks to our own Kenneth Tan about Gays.com, the online gay social networking site started right here in Shanghai. [CNET]
• Two gangsters have been sentenced to death after being caught in the massive Chongqing corruption crackdown. [Washington Post]
• Does China need to start letting ordinary citizens take part in the political process in order to maintain a stable growth? At least one place thinks so. [Foreign Affairs]

Can't get enough of that ass-kickingly intense UFC action? Lucky for us, the Ultimate Fighting Championship has teamed up with Sohu to offer live streaming Pay-Per-View of their events: as most of the UFC is Mixed Martial Arts, it's about time they bring it to China, the so called "cradle of martial arts." The kick off to the new partnership will be the “UFC 109: Relentless” event on February 6th, so don't forget to tune in! more ›

You might have heard that the "restrictions" on media and communications in Xinjiang are slowly but surely being "restored." Well, it seems like that's a bit too optimistic: First, the ban on SMS services was lifted, but according to Far West China, you can only send twenty messages a day. In addition, you can also make international calls as of today, and access to the internet is slowly being unblocked: as of now, there's a grand total of four websites you can access, and it seems even those are fairly censored. more ›

A survey conducted online by Sohu shows that to the Internet netizenry (at least those who took part in the survey) thinks, in regards to the telco reshuffle: more ›