Sina Weibo, the popular Chinese social website often compared to Twitter, is to allow nearly 1 million of its verified users to initiate charity programs by posting messages on an updated charity platform.
The new version of Sina Micro-charities enables verified micro-bloggers to publish information for people in need of help, including themselves.
A team of five volunteers (who will be randomly chosen among 255 senior micro-bloggers by the system) will be responsible for verifying the authenticity of the information within 48 hours.
After that, charity programs will be made public on Sina Weibo’s philanthropy sector and the system will help to match them with appropriate organizations.
Sina Weibo claims to have around 368 million users including more than 520,000 verified individual users and about 400,000 verified organizations, according to its most recent financial report.
Bei Xiaochao, Sina’s social responsibility director, said the company introduced the platform dedicated for micro-charities on Sina Weibo in February, and so far it has helped initiate about 1,400 charity programs and raise more than 10 million yuan ($1.6 million).