Many young people used microblogs to send Chinese New Year wishes to friends over the Spring Festival because it was cheaper than other methods such as sending text messages.
Statistics show there were more than 63.11 million people in China with microblog accounts at the end of last year. Sending greetings on the instant messaging tool had become the most popular.
More than 1.8 million microblogs at Sina.com, a Web site which had the largest number of microbloggers in the country, had the keywords such as "Happy New Year" while sending wishes through microblogs organized by the Web site had attracted more than 1 million replies.
"Sending microblog is very convenient because one message can be seen by all friends on the Internet," said Lin Tao, a Shenzhen government employee. "In the past, I had to send hundreds of text messages during the festival, which took me hours, and it was very difficult to send messages because the network was blocked due to the large number of messages," he said.
Apart from sending New Year wishes, many netizens also shared their festival experiences on microblogs, such as what they ate for the family dinners, what they did on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day and what the festival traditions were in different areas.
A netizen, identified by her Internet name, Nahh, was one who "live broadcast" her family dinner with a microblog. "I took photos of my mother preparing the dinner and how she cooked the dinner. They were very popular and it was like I spent my festival together with all my friends," she said.
(By Wang Yuanyuan)
