National Basketball Association

Kobe joins Chinese social media

Published Feb. 14, 2013 12:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

He has not uttered one word yet, but Kobe Bryant's mere presence on a Twitter-like Chinese-language site has stirred plenty of excitement.

Sina Weibo has verified that the NBA superstar has set up an individual account on its hugely popular microblogging site. Bryant's followers numbered more than 100,000 within hours on Thursday, although no comments from Bryant had appeared.

The account came just a few days after a message appeared on Nike Basketball's Sina Weibo account, named Black Mamba, on Lunar New Year's Day: ''Hey it's Kobe, I've decided to take over Nike basketball's Weibo handle for a few days and I wanted to wish you all a Happy New Year.''

Bryant is widely known and extremely popular in China, rivaling hometown star Yao Ming. During the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, billboards of Bryant dominated China's commercial districts.

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.

''Hello, Black Mamba, welcome to SINA WEIBO. It's been a long time for Chinese fans to wait for this moment,'' the page wrote.

Sina Weibo says it has more than 400 million users.