Earlier this week, Apple boss Tim Cook created his own page on Weibo, a social networking website perhaps best described as China’s equivalent of Twitter. As recently reported by Apple Magazine, Apple became the leader of China’s smartphone market earlier this year – but Twitter and Facebook are both banned in China, leaving an alternative Apple social media presence for the world’s most populous country somewhat inevitable.
Unsurprisingly given Apple’s current popularity among the Chinese, Cook’s verified page on Weibo, which permits Twitter-style microblogging but also has features more typical of Facebook, has already attracted hundreds of thousands of followers. There have also been tens of thousands of comments and likes for Cook’s first Weibo post, which he has used to enthuse about Beijing and point out his company’s recently announced environmental initiatives in China.
Those initiatives include Apple’s strategy of increasing its use of renewable paper by looking after forests used to make paper packaging for the company’s products, and its use of renewable power in the factories it operates in China.