Alibaba and Sina reportedly will announce a Weibo-based e-commerce platform at a press event later this week. The platform will integrate the system and data of Taobao and Tmall so that retailers will be able to sell goods to Weibo users like they have been doing on Alibaba’s marketplaces. The service is developed by an unnamed third-party e-commerce software company. (report in Chinese)

It sounds like the service being under test we heard about one month ago. So it’s likely that retailers will be able to reach and engage Weibo users directly, and eventually sell more goods.

There’s already been a third-party app, Youwuku, that helps retailers set up stores on Sina Weibo and sell goods, with payments solution provided by SinaPay.

Sina Weibo began featuring ads from Taobao’s contextual ad program on user homepage and the post feed after Alibaba took an 18% stake in it. Sina itself also released a flash sale service to tap into e-commerce directly earlier this year.

Tracey Xiang is Beijing, China-based tech writer. Reach her at traceyxiang@gmail.com

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