J-Pop Queen Hamasaki Ayumi recently joined Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, which drew an excited response from her Chinese fans. But they won't be the only ones getting updates - international fans can follow along as well, since she'll be microblogging in English 99% of the time.

It's only been two days since Hamasaki created her account, and she's already� amassed close to 310,000 followers. Shortly after joining, she reported the progress on her Twitter, saying: "I started Weibo less than 24 hours ago and almost 100,000 followers! How much more will it grow... China is amazin'!!"

It's great to see a Japanese musician go the extra mile to interact with their international fanbase. Check out her Weibo by clicking here.



Created in 2009, Sina Weibo has around 195 million users. The microblogging service can be described as a hybrid between Facebook and Twitter, both of which are censured in mainland China. Although it is currently only available in Chinese, there are reports that it will launch an English-language interface sometime this year.

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Thanks to setsuka for the tip!