Welcome to your go-to guide on monitoring Sina Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, and Little Red Book within your Explore searches. These additional data types are available for users of Explore and can be added to your searches via the Explore source filter.
These Chinese Social channels are a premium offering. Please reach out to your Account Manager to inquire about how you can add these data sources to your Meltwater Account. Or, inquire here.
This article will take you through:
Sina Weibo
Sina Weibo is a Chinese microblogging platform. Launched in 2009, it is one of the biggest social media platforms in China, with over 550 million monthly active users as of 2021. Sina Weibo is very similar to Twitter.
Our monitoring of Sina Weibo is of all public content. We collect the data via their API (keywords-based data collection). Your monitoring keywords will be matched with text in the body of the post, repost, or comment.
Specifics:
The content excludes any private post
200 million posts are collected each month
WeChat is a Chinese multi-purpose messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. It was first released in 2011 and became one of the world's largest standalone mobile apps in 2021, with over 1.2 billion monthly active users. WeChat has been described as China's "app for everything" because of its wide range of functions.
Our monitoring of Wechat is of more than 800,000 WeChat official accounts, of which around 90 to 95% of accounts are highly active (posting at least once a week, or handling customer care). We collect WeChat data via their API (keywords-based data collection). Your monitoring keywords will be matched with text in the body of the post.
Specifics:
This data includes public content only
WeChat Sub Accounts content is included
2 million posts are collected each day
Adding more profiles to be monitored
Requesting additional profiles to be monitored is included within the Extended Social Listening package. Please share these requests with your Account Manager.
Douyin
Douyin is a Chinese social media video app for creating and sharing short lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos.
Launched in September 2016 by China’s young tech giant ByteDance.
As of 2021, there are about 600 Million monthly active users on Douyin.
We collect WeChat data via the Douyin API (keywords-based data collection). Douyin data can only be gathered by specific keywords.
Specifics:
We track public Douyin content
6 million posts are collected each month
Available engagement metadata: Number of likes + Number of comments.
Content is collected 3-5 days after publication
Little Red Book (Xiaohongshu)
Created in 2014, Xiaohongshu, also known as Little Red Book, or simply Red, has grown to become China’s foremost fashion and luxury shopping platform. But it isn’t really a shopping platform at all. It’s first and foremost a content-sharing site, where users can post product photos with reviews and tips for other users to read, comment, and save to their boards - like Pinterest.
Specifics:
We consume Red content via a Firehose from a 3rd party provider.
Engagement metadata will be added: Likes, shares, and comments, updated after 3 days
Historical data: The content in Explore will go back to 16th August.
Youku
Launched in December 2003, Youku is a video hosting service based in Beijing, China. It operates as a subsidiary of Alibaba Group Holding Limited. Youku is one of China's top online video and streaming service platforms. As of 2020, there are about 400 Million monthly active users.
Specifics:
We track public content. Youku data can only be gathered by specific keywords in the title/description of videos
800k posts are collected each month
We collected data via the API (keywords-based data collection) until October 2020, when Youku closed its API. Now we crawl a seed of profiles on a regular basis.
Posts metrics (engagement actions, impressions, estimated reach) are not available.
Bilibili
Launched in early 2010, Bilibili is a Chinese video-sharing website based in Shanghai. It is focused on animation, comics, and games (ACG), where users can submit, view, and add overlaid commentary on videos. By late 2021, the number of average monthly active users reached about 267 million.
We collect data through a seed of profiles and a searcher.
Posts metrics available include impressions and estimated reach.
6 million posts are collected each month.
Historical Data
Currently available content and monitored profiles in Explore go back to 26, July 2021.
Boolean Table
These boolean operators can help you to target your social media searches and can be used in conjugation with other boolean terms such as AND, OR & NOT. Learn more about other boolean terms within our Learn the Complete Boolean Library article here.
Boolean | Description | Sina Weibo | Douyin | |
handle:[username] | Find every video from a specific user using their username | handle:thomanleung | handle:摩力机车 | n/a |
author:[authorname] | Find every video from a specific user using their full author-name | author:"Diecast-NewsCH" | author:molijicheche | author:"这不是宇梓" |
metrics.source.reach>[followers] | Find posts from users with a high number of followers | metrics.source.reach>1000 | n/a | n/a |
metrics.views.total>[views] | Find posts with a certain number of views | n/a | n/a | n/a |
metrics.reactions.total>[reactions] | Find posts with a certain number of reactions | n/a | n/a | metrics.reactions.total>1000 |
metrics.shares.total>[shares] | Find videos with a certain number of shares | n/a | n/a | n/a |
metrics.threads.total>[comments] | Find videos with a certain number of comments | n/a | n/a | metrics.threads.total>100 |
language:[code] | Find all posts with description in a specific language | language:EN | language:EN | language:EN |
externalId:[post_id] | Find a specific post by ID | externalId:"4668685924961218" | externalId:"1cc6fc3886dc95a4b5c27a5650b71c07" | externalId:“6994612347004325150" |
metaData.source.url:[”user profileURL”] | Find all posts from a specific user by user url | metaData.source.url:”https://weibo.com/u/6530869783” | n/a | metaData.source.url:":"https://www.xiaohongshu.com/discovery/item/6124a425000000002103d0ab" |
Thank you for reading. If you have any further questions, feel free to reach out to us via Live Chat!
Team Meltwater