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Social media in China are already largely made of leisure content (entertainment, food, etc.) mostly created by a few big content providers.
Looking at Twitter, Facebook - and Quora, I think social media worldwide are following the path of other media before (radio, TV, cinema ...) : large streams of entertaining content for the masses made by a very structured and profitable industry.
In this regard, I think Chinese social media is ahead and have already turn into a real content industry, not only some web services with advertisement. I can explain this by several reasons :
- The social media industry is run by content providers : Tencent & Sina have large news portals and create lots of content.
- Censorship of the web has forced the industry to turn more and more towards entertainment, as "news " can be more sensitive and risky - and therefore generate additional costs.
- The Chinese social media users tends to follow more brands and stars, which naturally brings a bigger focus on entertainment content.