China moves to control Sina Weibo social network with real names

Anyone wishing to post on one of China's networks, including the enormously popular Sina Weibo (way-bore), must now register with their real names, allowing the government to easily find them if they write anything contentious.
By Friday afternoon, only 19 million of the 250 million users of Sina Weibo had registered, according to a counter on the company's website. Later in the day, the counter was disabled and Sina did not respond to requests for updated figures.
If the figure is correct, it represents a crushing blow for Sina's service, which has had a phenomenal impact on China in the three years since it launched.
Not only has this Eastern version of Twitter largely displaced television and newspapers as the country's most important source of information, but it has reconfigured the relationship between the Communist party and its citizens.
The largely unfettered stream of news, gossip, entertainment, scandal and opinion on the website, all posted in real time, has confounded the Chinese government's attempts to cover up or play down issues, and has forced officials to pay more attention to the public.