What's on Weibo, an independent blog that reports on social and cultural trends in China, recently released a list of the top five embassies with the largest number of followers on Sina Weibo, China's most influential micro-blogging platform. The Israeli embassy tops the list with over 1.91 million followers, which are 800,000 more than the Canadian embassy, the second on the list, and almost double that of the US embassy, which sits at No. 3.

Chinese internet company Sina plans to spin off its Twitter-like microblog service, Weibo, in a US initial public offering to raise US$500 million, a person with knowledge of the deal said on Tuesday. The person, who wasn’t authorised to speak publicly about the deal, said investment banks Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse had been hired to manage the IPO in New York.