BEIJING - Chinese microblog queen Yao Chen, who is a popular actress outside the virtual world, has attracted more than 10 million followers on the country's Twitter-like microblog service, showcasing the rapid development of the platform.

Yao had 10,000,720 fans on her microblog t.sina.com.cn/yaochen at 9:41 am Wednesday, which is not far from that of the nearly 12 million followers of Lady Gaga on Twitter.

The portal website sina.com.cn, which runs the microblog service, crowned Yao "queen of the microblog" when Yao's followers exceeded 5 million in January, outstripping even the iconic US talk show host Oprah Winfrey.

Yao is the first non-Twitter microblogger among the world's 10 most followed microbloggers. Her charisma is attributed to the honesty expressed in her postings, which are like text messages sent between old friends, Sina said.

The 32-year-old actress rocketed to fame in 2006 for her role in the popular sitcom "My Own Swordsman". She also starred in the phenomenally-successful television series "Lurk" from 2008.

Microblog services enjoyed "explosive growth" in its number of users in the first six months this year, as the number surged by 208.9 percent to 195 million, said the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) in a report earlier this month.

The number of people using the Internet grew 6.1 percent to 485 million by the end of June, according to the report.