Sina portal aims to transform into a self-publishing media platform and this decision is not influenced by Sina’s cooperation with Alibaba Group, said Du Hong, co-president and COO of the company (report in Chinese).
In addition to contents from other traditional media, the new platform planned to cover more original contents which are generated by individual writers (We-Media). Sina divided the source of We-Media into three classes, namely, first-tier columnists, reporters of traditional media who write in their spare time and grassroots writers.
Sina is developing a back-end system for them, providing different types of publishing channels, including content generator, column, blog and Weibo. In addition, Sina also planned to offer analytical tools based on article comments or page view to individual writers in a bid to improve their content quality. The content will be presented in diversified forms, including text, video and pictures, a lower threshold for grassroots journalism (source in Chinese).
Du emphasized that high-quality content is the key for We-Media, adding that contents related to life will become highlights for We-Media. Sina also put forward an ads revenue-sharing plan for the We-Media platform. The company planned to diversify its revenue structure by adding value-added service and e-commerce into this new platform.