50 Millions Users, Sina To Launch Weibo.com For Its Microblogging Service

Instead of using the word ‘microblogging’ (in Chinese, means Weibo), Sina.com held its first China Weibo Developer Conference today. The message Sina wants to deliver is quite clear:

1. Sina is the leader in Chinese microblogging market;
2. Sina’s microblogging service is now the leading Platform which opens to third parties;
3. Sina is the inventor of Chinese microblogging which is called Weibo and it is opening a new era in Chinese social media. Weibo.com will be launched soon, the ambition is obvious.

Sina should be proud of its Weibo product as figures explains everything,

• By end of October, 2010, Sina Weibo’s users have reached 50millions and 25 millions miniblog (tweets) published per day;
• Public launched at 28th August 2009, Sina Weibo only took 66 days to attract 1 million users; It reached 10 millions users at 28th April 2010, then 30 millions users at 28th August 2010. In past 2 months, Sina Weibo acquired another 20 millions users; Now 50 millions users in total.
• Young generation is now big fan of Weibo. 47% of its users are under the age of 22, and 57% of the active users are female.
• Sina Weibo is now a platform. Over 300 Weibo applications are developed by third parties, and acquired 15 millions users; Youku videos are played on Sina Weibo 1.3 millions times per day.

We commented on Sina and MSN China’s partnership saying Sina is now quite aggressively re-positioning itself as an Internet platform not just a media. Sina Weibo is Sina youngest product but now definitely its one of the strongest selling point. At the opening speech, Sina’s CEO even announced a rmb 200 million fund for Weibo developers or third parties. 50% of the fund is from Sina, five top VC (Sequoia, IDG, Innovation Works, Yunfeng Fund, DFJ) takes 10% respectively. Although it’s still a question how much Sina has earned from its Weibo, but Sina even revealed its revenue share structure, 70% will be given back to developers/thrid-parties.

over 2000 people showed up today in the conference and quite a few even came from Taiwan, Hongkong. Reports say Kaixin001, the most popular SNS in 2009 is developing its own microblogging service as its traffic has significantly drop down since Sina Weibo launch; We also met the founder of Plurk, the most popular microblogging service in Taiwan months ago in Singapore. He told my friend Thomas Crampton, the biggest thread for Plurk is now Sina Weibo. The interesting point is, there is almost no language barrier between mainland China and Taiwan, still it’s very hard to see an internet service from mainland China to dominate Taiwan market. Sina Weibo could be the first, soon!