Basketball: NBA star Kobe Bryant comes to China's social media
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File photo of Los Angeles Lakers Kobe Bryant looking up during the Lakers NBA match up against the Phoenix Sun at Staples Center in Los Angeles, California, on Feb 12, 2013. He has not uttered one word yet, but Kobe Bryant's mere presence on a Twitter-like Chinese-language microblogging site has stirred plenty of excitement. -- PHOTO: AFP
BEIJING (AP) - He has not uttered one word yet, but Kobe Bryant's mere presence on a Twitter-like Chinese-language microblogging site has stirred plenty of excitement.
Sina Weibo has verified that the National Basketball Association superstar has set up an individual account on its hugely popular site. Bryant's followers numbered more than 100,000 within hours on Thursday.
Bryant is widely known and extremely popular in China. The Los Angeles Lakers star has several fan pages on Sina Weibo.
One of them - "Home of Kobe" - has more than 200,000 followers. Along with other sites, it posted a welcome message for Bryant and encouraged fans to leave comments for him by promising to help translate some of the remarks.
