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Weibo crashes after Chinese pop star announces new girlfriend

Popular singer Luhan announced his new girlfriend on Weibo, a platform similar to Twitter. The post has more likes than Barack Obama's most liked tweet.

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Headshot of Zoey Chong
Zoey Chong Reporter
Zoey is CNET's Asia News Reporter based in Singapore. She prefers variety to monotony and owns an Android mobile device, a Windows PC and Apple's MacBook Pro all at the same time. Outside of the office, she can be found binging on Korean variety shows, if not chilling out with a book at a café recommended by a friend.
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"The Great Wall" Beijing Premiere

All it took was one post from this celeb to send Weibo's servers crashing for hours.

 VCG via Getty Images

What does it take to crash China's equivalent of Twitter? A pop star's new girlfriend, apparently.

Luhan, a popular Chinese singer once part of Chinese-Korean pop band EXO, on Sunday made a post to Weibo introducing the world to his new girlfriend. Traffic on the platform soared, leading to it crashing within half an hour, Chinese media reported. After nearly four hours, service resumed at 4 p.m.

Weibo works similarly to Twitter, and has 340 million users -- which is about 10 million more than Twitter.  Luhan's post has garnered over 5 million likes at the time of writing. The most liked post on Twitter, made by former US President Barack Obama, sits at 4.6 million. Luhan's stardom isn't to be underestimated: even Matt Damon is impressed. 

Chinese internet users took to the platform (mostly) to voice their displeasure, with some criticising his choice and saying she's "fake." Many also suspected the post is a marketing ploy to generate interest in a new drama the couple has filmed. Over on Twitter, users are also tweeting their responses to his announcement, though many seem more supportive than on Weibo: