Specialized newsrooms abuzz on WeChat

BEIJING -- Lu Jiuping starts working at 4 am every day, but the retired 50-year-old businessman has never made a cent from his current occupation.

He starts his day by reading several financial websites, picking out valuable bits of business or IT news.

Not satisfied to digest the information alone, he posts these news items in "Tearoom 90," an official account he registered on WeChat, a popular mobile social networking platform developed by Chinese IT giant Tencent.

Since it was set up in February, Lu's free subscriber service has attracted a readership of over 14,000, quickly turning it from a "tearoom" to a "newsroom," much to the delight of the amateur media strategist.

"I am working as the chief editor of an e-magazine," Lu said.

The Official Account is one built-in WeChat function that offers broadcast messaging. Operators of each account can share anything in any format with their subscribers and receive instant feedback.

According to Tencent's website, the platform was originally created for big brands, such as airlines and banks, and celebrities, but it has unexpectedly struck a chord with ordinary people and citizen reporters, like Lu, who are taking advantage of the platform to develop specialized storytelling styles.

In the past few years, Sina Weibo, China's most popular Twitter-like service, has exploded in popularity. Millions of Weibo users use the service to speak their mind.

Platforms such as Sina Weibo and WeChat are changing the way media works, with netizens now discovering and discussing social events online.

However, spam and misinformation have grabbed onto the coattails of the service, and people are getting tired of irrelevant or boring microblogs that pop up on their screens all day.

Lv Xin, dean of the New Media Department of Animation and Digital Arts School of Communication University of China, described this as the "parabola" of social media development.

He said that the rise of microblogging inspired ordinary people from all walks of life to voice their opinions on social issues, breaking down traditional media's long-held domination over the spread of information and speeding up information transmission.

As they become increasingly immersed in social media, however, users find that it gets "boring" to sift through massive amounts of irrelevant information to find news that interests them. Instead, they prefer to spend their time perusing concise and well-organized information delivered to them directly.