Sina Weibo went into the black in the fourth quarter of 2013 for the first time, but...

SINA corporation published the financial results in the fourth quarter of 2013, and they also published the financial results of Sina Weibo there.

According to this report, Sina Weibo went into the black in the fourth quarter of 2013 for the first time, their sales revenue was 71.4 million USD in total.

The breakdown of total revenue was composed of 56.0 million USD of ad revenue and 15.4 million USD of service revenue. Its ads revenue increased 163% compared with the year-earlier period, and its service revenue increased 114% compared with the year-earlier period.

Sina Weibo was also increasing their revenue on the second quarter and the third quarter compared with each year-earlier period, so it can be said that their sales performance has been continuously growing.

And according to the information from Financial Times, Sina Weibo prepares New York IPO in the second quarter of this year.


Judging only from their financial results and the rumor of IPO, their future seems to be rosy. But I think there are two main anxiety of them.

- The percentage of ad revenue was too high.
As everyone knows, the customer basically would like to advertise on the platform that has a lot of active users. But as I repeatedly said, Sina Weibo has continuously decreased their active users. In the interview of this financial results, the official said their active user increased to 61.4 million in December. But I feel this comment is unbelievable.


I have login to Sina Weibo everyday since 2010 to watch the number of active friend user, and I also have checked the traffic from Sina Weibo to the official site of our company every week. But as I said before, both are continuously decreasing.

I think it is high time to reconsider countermeasures to increase their active users. Otherwise they will also decrease the sponsor of advertisement.


- There are no remarkable outcome from the relationship with Alibaba.
As you know, Alibaba acquired 18% share of Sina Weibo in 586 million USD last April. And they also started alliance activity at same time, but till now, it seems that there are no remarkable outcome from it.

Alibaba is the giant company in Chinese EC industry, and they also have a lot of giant group company, such as Taobao and Alipay. So there should be a lot of method to enhance their relationship. But it seems that their remarkable outcome is only that ads posting or banner increased on Sina Weibo.

I think that they also have to consider this countermeasure in earnest.


Anyway, we have to continue watching their action as ever.


Source => Official financial report from Sina corp. , TechWeb

Two things that Sina Weibo have the problem.

Sina published the performance reporting in the second quarter yesterday, and some number of Sina Weibo also became clear with this.

The total revenue of Sina Weibo was about 37.7 million USD in the second quarter, and it increased 46.1% compared to the last quarter. Among the revenue, the advertising revenue was 30 million USD, and the service revenue was 7.7 million USD.

About the advertising revenue increased more than 50% compared to the last quarter, but the service revenue was slight increase.

According to the annual reporting in 2012, 77% of Sina Weibo revenue was earned from the advertising revenue, other 23% of revenue was earned from service revenue.
But the rate of the advertising revenue in this quarter was about 85.7%, so it can be said that their dependence on the advertising revenue is more and more running high.

I think that this dependence (in other words 'bias') is the first problem for Sina Weibo, and I think that they have to strengthen other revenue more, such as the collaboration with Alibaba (It means "Social Commerce").


The second problem is the low rate of active users.

They announced that their daily active users were 54 million people, but their total registered user was over than 500 million people. It means that the rate of daily active users was only about 10%.

According to the news, the recent daily active user of Facebook was 699 million people. Compared to them, it can be said that the daily active users rate of Sina Weibo is very low.

Increasing the rate of active users have been the long term problem for Sina Weibo, but it can be said that it is still midway.


According to the news, PifferJaffray recently estimated that the market value of Sina Weibo is 6 billion USD, but this number is more than the value when Alibaba acquired 18% share of Sina Weibo in 586 million USD. And according to the some resources, Sina Weibo intends to list stocks independently in the future.


We have to keep watching whether their plan will achieve or not as ever.


Source => TechWeb, Sina Tech

The battle in the lunar new year greetings of the big three social media services in China. (QQ/ WeChat/ Sina Weibo)

This year, from Jan 31 to Feb 6th is the lunar new year holiday in China. And by the old calender, Jan 31 was the new year's day, and Jan 30 was the new year's eve of this year. Recently the person who send and receive the greetings of new year on the social media is rapidly increasing in China as I explained before.

Chinese big three social media service, QQ, WeChat, Sina Weibo published the announcement that is related with the new year's greetings as follows.

1. QQ (Tencent)

According to the official announcement, there were 13.6 billion messages in Jan 30th on QQ platform. And in a peak time, there were 32.7 million messages in 1 minute, and they also said that there were 16 million video messages in 1 day.


2. WeChat (Tencent)

According to the official announcement, in a peak time, there were about 10 million messages on WeChat. They didn't publish the total message number of Jan 30th, but they said that its total sending message number were double of the last year, and its total receiving message number were three times of the last year.

And they also said the peak time of exchanging messages were 22:00 and 24:00 on Jan 30th.


3. Sina Weibo (Sina)

According to the official announcement, there were 863,408 messages on the first one minute of Jan 31. They also didn't publish the total messages number, but there were 729,751 message at the same period of the last year, so it can be said its number was increasing.


Well, by looking only this result, QQ is the king. And the next is WeChat, and Sina Weibo was far away from them. But this result was based of new year greetings.

In general, the new year greetings are exchanged between the family, friends and the acquaintance. I think that the social media services can categorize two types by the point of their characteristic view.

Those are "social media service that directed inward" and "social media service that directed outward". Users mainly exchange the personal information between the close relationship in the "social media service that directed inward", and its typical example is Facebook.

On the other hand, user would like to spread their information to unknown people such as the purpose of personal branding in the "social media service that directed outward", and its typical example is Twitter.

And I think that QQ and WeChat is the "social media service that directed inward", and Sina Weibo is the "social media service that directed outward". So I think that Sina Weibo does not have to be pessimistic about this result. If the standard is different, its result also will be different.

But Sina Weibo is recently said that their total users or active users are decreasing.  I think, in the peak period of their growth( it is in 2011) , the users who like the "social media service that directed inward" also joined Sina Weibo, because their friend or acquaintance also use Sina Weibo. And recently, mainly such user was gone or stop to use Sina Weibo, I think.

So I think that Sina Weibo have to care the users who like the "social media service that directed outward", and at the same time, they have to decide how treat the users who like the "social media service that directed inward".


Last, I would like to introduce the status of SMS messages.

SMS has been the most popular method of exchanging the new year greeting in China for a long time. But as I explained before, its number is recently decreasing year by year.

Its number is estimated 30 billion messages during this Chinese new year's holiday, but its number will be decreasing 1.17 billion messages compared with the last year. Mainly almost young people, 80's or 90's, like to use QQ or WeChat when they will sent such greetings, so I think this trend also continue in future.


Many users sometimes have the different two intention in their mind, such as "social media service that directed inward" and "social media service that directed outward". When many users get tires of the "social media service that directed inward", then they tend to move to the "social media service that directed outward". And the reverse pattern is also true.

Now WeChat is the most powerful social media service in China, and it can be said that WeChat is the "social media service that directed inward". So I think the "social media service that directed outward" may come to the fore as a next trend of WeChat.


Souece => Social Media in China blog (Japanese version)

The ad revenue of Sina Weibo was 18.8 million USD, and 34% of them were from mobile ad.

Sina published the performance reporting in the first quarter few days ago, but some number of Sina Weibo was also become clear with this.

The total revenue of Sina Weibo was 25.8 million USD in the first quarter, but this detail is as follows:

Advertising --- 18.8 million USD (34% of them were from mobile ad.)
Revenue share from Game --- 5 million USD
Professional service (Weibo Club) --- 2 million USD

About 73% of their revenue were from advertising, but this reporting emphasized that their revenue of besides ad was rapidly increasing. I think that this phrase includes their will or wish to expand the revenue from that area.


By the way, how much does the revenue of Sina Weibo contribute to all revenue of Sina now? This answer is as follows:

Ad revenue from portal site     59.9%

Ad revenue from Weibo             14.9%

Revenue from Mobile services  12.6%

Service revenue from Weibo        5.6%
(*This means "Game" and "Professional Service")

Other      5.8%




This graph said that the total revenue of Sina Weibo contributed about 20% to the all revenue of Sina. Sina is now mainly focusing on the Weibo business, but it can be said that this graph proved the result that Sina Weibo made a certain contribution.

Alibaba joined the Sina Weibo team last month, but which action will they execute together from now on? Let's keep attention to their action as before.


Source => china.com, iResearch, Performance reporting by Sina

"The chronological table of Sina Weibo", the tracks of their 3 years.

Today is the third anniversary of Sina Weibo. They launched their service on Aug-28 2009, but let's look back over their 3 years tracks :

[2009]
May   Sina CEO Charles Chao published the plan of their Weibo service on their event in Chengdu.

Aug-28    Sina Weibo started their service as a public beta.

Nov-2     The registered users of Sina Weibo exceeded 1,000,000 people.



[2010]
Aug-28   Their first anniversary (The registered users exceeded 30,000,000 people ).

End of Oct   Their registered users exceeded 50,000,000 people.

Nov-25   They started to deliver community feature called "Weiqun".



[2011]
Mar-2   They announced that their registered users already exceeded 100,000,000.

Apr-7   They changed their domain to "weibo.com".

May-13  They started to deliver certified users ("V") service.

Jul-21   They released special Android smartphone with HTC.

Jul-27   The follower of "Yao Chen" exceeded 10,000,000 people.

Jul-28   They started to deliver their light-blog "Qing".

Oct-21   They intensified the search service on their Weibo as "s.weibo.com".

Nov-3   They started to deliver the Weibo number called "Wei Hao".



[2012]
Mar-1   Instagram start to support Sina Weibo.

Mar-1   It started that the search result from Sina Weibo was displayed on Baidu.

Apr   They started to deliver ads service on their platform to the public.

May-9   They started to deliver corporate page version 2.

May-16   They announced that their registered users become 324,000,000 people.

May-28   They published the new rules for users on their Weibo.

Jun-8   They formally started the revenue sharing model between game developers and Sina Weibo( the rate of 7 to 3).

The middle of Jun   They formally published their LBS platform to the public.




Source => TechWeb

The ranking of 2012 hot topic and person on Sina Weibo. PSY also got the large popularity in China.

What topic or person was popular in China in 2012?
Sina Weibo published the answer for this question.

First diagram is the ranking of people who were mentioned on Sina Weibo in 2012.

#1 was PSY that everyone know as "Gangnam Style".
His "Gangnam Style" reaches 1B views on YouTube, but he also got the huge popularity in China. And he have a official account on Sina Weibo, its account already have more than 5M followers now.

#2 was a Chinese singer "Han Geng", and #3 was "Ren Zhiqiang" who is a famous person in real estate industry.

Unexpectedly, Weibo queen "Yao Chen" was ranked #30. Her official account have over 30M followers on Sina Weibo, and this number is still the largest on there.She remarried this year, so it should be no lack of the topic. Furthermore as I said, she have a lot of followers now, so its result was the unexpected.


Next diagram is the ranking of topic(keyword)  that was mentioned on Sina Weibo in 2012.

#1 was the topic about "London Olympics". During this Olympics, Sina Weibo prepared the special page for this, and users also posted a lot of messages. #2 is a one of internet slang "屌丝(diao si)". And #3 is ranked "Gangnam Style" again.

Furthermore, the feature of this ranking was included some of political topic too, such as #8, #10, #14 and so forth.


Well, what topic or person will be ranked in 2013? In order that we can know this answer,  we have to wait until the end of this year :-)


Source => Sina Weibo-1, Sina Weibo-2

Each Chinese internet service visit duration ranking in 2012. Sina Weibo was ranked 3rd place.

For each internet services, the number of users is naturally important, but the visit duration is also very important. Meanwhile HTWISE just published the visit duration ranking of each internet services in China.

                        all visit duration in 2012       Share               Type of Service

                            (Unit : billion hours) 

#1 Baidu                           5.61                          7.0%                 Search Engine

#2 Taobao                        4.12                          5.1%                 EC

#3 Sina Weibo                 1.81                          2.3%                 Weibo

#4 Youku                          1.59                          2.0%                 Video Sharing

#5 Baidu Tieba                1.37                          1.7%                 Community

#6 Qzone                          1.32                          1.6%                 SNS

#7 Tudou                          1.06                          1.3%                 Video Sharing

#8 QQ Mail                       0.96                          1.2%                 Mail

#9 Baidu Knows              0.85                          1.1%                 Collective intelligence

#10 Renren                      0.74                           0.9%                 SNS

In 2012, Chinese search engine giants Baidu was the 1st place of this ranking, and their 2 other services were also ranked in top 10. So it can be said that they are just the internet giants in China.  

Chinese EC giants Taobao was the 2nd place. They have the top share of BtoC EC market in China, and its market is still rapidly growing, so it may be a natural consequence.

Sina Weibo was ranked 3rd place, but there are little bit difference with top 2. Video sharing service "Youku" and "Tudou" merged last year, both were ranked in top 10.

Next is the graph of focusing to Weibo services.

The left graph is the number of visiting to each Weibo in annual of 2012.

Sina Weibo was totally visited about 1 billion times in 2012. Tencent Weibo was visited about 0.5 billion times, and Sohu Weibo was visited about 0.4 billion times, and NetEase was visited 0.1 billion times in 2012.

The right graph is the ratio of visit duration on each Weibo. Sina Weibo had 71% share in this, and it was a landslide victory.

In 2012, Sina Weibo showed the overwhelming presence in Weibo market. But as I said, there are little bit difference with top two. Furthermore Weixin also exist their backward. 2013 is still challenging year for them.

Source => Yangtse

Sina and HTC co-promote HTC one special model for Sina Weibo.

Sina and HTC China co-promote HTC One special model for Sina Weibo.

 
























They prepared two type devices, and one of them is HTC One S,  another is HTC One V. Basically these two devices are almost as same as world wide model of them, but main different point is a Sina Weibo hardware button. 

When user push on the Sina Weibo hardware button, Sina Weibo is started. And if user push on this button when they use Web browser, the link of this page is put on Sina Weibo tweet page.











Sina and HTC also co-released special model named "Weike" last year.

Sina Weibo would like to increase their mobile user, and HTC also would like to increase their user and market share, so it may be they had a community of interests.


Baidu and Tencent already released their own Android custom ROM, and Baidu co-released their special Android devices with Changhong.

There is a lot of various actors in Chinese mobile industry, so it will be more exciting and interesting more than now :)



Original article => HTC official account on Sina Weibo

Alibaba rumored that they would like to get 15-20% stock of Sina Weibo.

According to the some news source,  the biggest EC company in China Alibaba rumored to make an investment in Sina Weibo.


Now the enterprise value of Sina Weibo is estimated 2-3 billion USD, but Alibaba rumored that they wish get 15-20% stock of Sina Weibo.

Sina Weibo is a group company of Sina group, but they are a independent company to provide Weibo services.


I think this investment is good for both side.

Firstly, Sina Weibo would like to accelerate their monetization, and EC business on their Weibo is the one of key factor to do it. Actually, they already started some investment for the EC business, but they don't have enough environment compared to Tencent.

On the other hand, Alibaba is the top position of B2B EC market in China, and its group company Tmall and Taobao are the top position of consumer EC market in China. But the other EC company is also catching up with them day by day, so they would like to add the platform of EC. Furthermore, Sina Weibo have 400 million users in the third quarter, so it will be a strong marketing platform for them.


This is the stage of rumor, but this may be surprisingly decided more quickly than our expectation.

Source => IT home, Tencent IT

88.81% of over 19 years old internet user are using Weibo in China.

According to the report by DCCI, 88.81% of over 19 years old internet users are using Weibo in China.

The usage rate of each Weibo is as follows(multiple answers allowed):

Using Sina Weibo       87.67%
Using Tencent Weibo  84.69%
Using NetEase Weibo  56.12%
Using Sohu Weibo      35.63%
Using ifeng Weibo      13.61%
Using other Weibo      18.37%


This report also said as follows:

- About 70% of Sina Weibo or Tencent Weibo user have a only one account on each services, and 18.54% of Sina Weibo user and 14.89% of Tencent Weibo user have more than two accounts on each services.

- The sex ratio of Weibo user is 57.4% of men and 42.6% of women.

- 43.28% of Weibo users follow one to five corporate official accounts, and 20.83% of Weibo users follow six to ten corporate official accounts.


As I reported before, the number of Weibo users was 273,645,000 people in the end of June, and it is estimated the user will exceed 300,000,000 in the end of 2012. Weibo became already one of the biggest platform for marketing in China. Have you already started Weibo? :)


Source => Eguan

More than 60% of Sina Weibo active users are mobile user.

Sina Weibo announced their total registered users are more than 300 million, and more than 60% of Sina Weibo active users are mobile users on the mobile event in Beijing.

Sina Weibo has announced that will accelerate their mobile solution last July, its effort might borne fruit.


And they also announced its detail as follows:

1. Active users ratio by mobile OS
iPhone 28.7％　Android 27.5％　Wap 24.6％　Symbian 8.6％

2. The peak time of access by mobile device
just go to work, lunch time, dinner time, at bedtime

3. The average time of using Weibo per a day
60 minutes

4. The access ratio by each region
Guangdong 24%  Beijing 12%  Zhejiang 7%  Shanghai 6%

5. 280000 applications are registered on Sina Weibo, and mobile apps are registered 20000 title.


Sina Weibo also said that they will prepare a community dedicated for mobile application soon.


The theme of Sina Weibo on this event was "connect, growth, open, win-win", we have to keep attentions to their mobile solutions as before.

Original article => TechWeb

Follower top 10 ranking on Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo (as of 01/30/2013).

I introduced before "Follower top 10 ranking on Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo". And today, I would like to introduce the current each top 10 ranking for the first time in 7 months again.

1. Follower top 10 ranking on Sina Weibo.

        Account                        Followers                  Last time.                 Property

 #1  Yao Chen                    35,104,708                       #1                        Actress

 #2  Vicki Zhao                 30,437,614　　　　　　-                    Actress & Singer

 #3  Leehom Wang           29,294,711                        #4                         Singer

 #4  Aloys Chen                29,263,132                        -                     Actor & Singer

 #5  Xiena(Nana)              28,596,037                       #5                            MC

 #6  Kaifu Lee                    27,337,648                       -                          Business

 #7  Ruby Lin                     27,308,293                        -                           Actress

 #8  Zhou Libo                   27,136,777                        -                         Comedian 

 #9  He Jiong                     26,863,195                        -                              MC

#10 Guo Degang              26,736,267                         -                           Actor

Compared to the last time, Weibo Queen "Yao Chen" still keep the top position, but 7 users were replaced at this time. Watching this ranking, I feel again that the replacement of Weibo world is also very fast.

2. Follower top 10 ranking on Tencent Weibo

         Account                        Followers                  Last time.                 Property

 #1  He Jiong                     35,666,488                       #1                               MC

 #2  Xiena(Nana)              32,799,897                       #2                               MC

 #3  Liu Xiang                   28,317,045                        #4                           Sports

 #4  Xu Jinglei                  27,698,606                        #5                          Actress

 #5  Karen Mok                 27,594,263                       #3                           Actress

 #6  Shu Qi                        26,338,751                        #7                          Actress

 #7  Stefanie Sun            25,838,571                        #6                           Singer

 #8  Ma Yili                       25,043,863                       #10                         Actress 

 #9  Kevin Tsai                 24,234,062                        #8                     Writer & MC

#10 Kaifu Lee                  23,998,632                        #9                         Business

Compared to the ranking of Sina Weibo, the change was very little. There are no users that was newly ranked in at this time.

According to the information of  "Twitter top 100 most followers", the most followed twitter user is Justin Bieber.

The number of his follower on Twitter is 33,724,425 people, so it may be said that He Jiong is the most followed user in the world :)

Source => Sina Weibo, Tencent Weibo

Alibaba and Sina formally co-announced that Alibaba will acquire 18% share of Sina Weibo in 586 million USD.

Today, Alibaba and Sina formally come to an agreement that Alibaba will invest in Sina Weibo, and Alibaba will acquire 18% share of Sina Weibo.

The press release by Sina said:


The two companies will cooperate in the areas of user account connectivity, data exchange, online payment and online marketing, among other things, and will explore new business models for social commerce based on the interactions of the hundreds of millions of users on Weibo and on Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms. The strategic alliance is expected to generate approximately $380 million in advertising and social commerce services revenues in aggregate for Weibo over the next three years.

　　Separately, the Company announced that Alibaba, through a wholly owned subsidiary, has invested $586 million to purchase preferred and ordinary shares representing approximately 18% of Weibo on a fully-diluted basis. SINA has also granted an option to Alibaba to enable Alibaba to increase its ownership in Weibo to 30% on a fully-diluted basis at a mutually agreed valuation within a certain period of time in the future.


As I explained before, the rumor of this investment existed from last year. But because Sina Weibo provided their own payment system "Weibo Wallet", and there are some reasons, so it was said that the possibility of this rumor was slowing down.


Let's continue watching their specific action from now on.


Source => Press Release, Sina Tech

Sina Weibo already started monetization, and their ads revenue was 10 million USD in the second quarter.

Sina published their statement in the second quarter, and this statement said that whole ads revenue of Sina company was 103.1 million USD.

In this ads revenue, ads revenue of Sina Weibo was 10 million USD in the same period. And Sina also said that its ads revenue consist 75 to 80% of existing customer and around 20% of new customer.

In this way, they started monetization, but Sina CEO Charles Chao said that Sina Weibo will start the promotional tweet in the fourth quarter and accelerate the action of their virtual money "Weibi" .


They also said that Sina Weibo already have 368 million users in the same period, and its daily active users were 36.5 million people. And the ratio of their mobile access was 69%, but 20% of this user also use PC for accessing to Sina Weibo, so it can be said the ratio of using only mobile was around 40%.

As I reported before, China's internet industry also rapidly increasing mobile internet user, so it can be said that the challenge of Sina Weibo is accelerating mobile solution in addition to promotional tweet and virtual money.



Source => Sohu IT, SCOL

The battle of Weibo and Weixin(WeChat) in 2012 and 2013. Each challenge and emerging.

2012 has already past, and 2013 already came. 

So today, I would like to think back on the trend of Chinese Social Media market that is focusing Weibo and Weixin(WeChat) last year, and survey the trend of them this year.

It can be said that 2012 was the year that the growth power of Weibo was decreasing, and the growth power of Weixin was dramatically increasing. About the fact that the growth power of Weibo was decreasing, we can make it clear from the history of reports from CNNIC.

Its indication was appeared from the second half of 2011, but its decrease was more remarkable in this year. The report of the second half of 2012 was not published yet, but I expect that the growth rate of this period will also remain at single digit figures.

Furthermore, I personally feel that the rate of active users is also gradually decreasing. There are two reasons for this.

1. The online user of friends was decreasing.

For example, we can find that how many users is now online on Sina Weibo as follows.

Today's number is only 27 people... Actually today is still holiday in China, but my friend on Sina Weibo exist about 600 people. The rate of online user is only 4.5%. 

It is a extreme example, but the daily average online user of last year was about 70 people, and the average of the year before last was about 130 people.

2. The traffic from Weibo was decreasing.

Our company was continuously posting the information on each social media of WW for marketing purpose. Weibo, especially Sina Weibo, brought the largest traffic to us, but this number was suddenly decreasing from the second half of 2012.

On the other hand, the growth power of Weixin is dramatically increasing as I explained before. And many companies already started the promotion activity on Weixin, and they started to post their QR code of Weixin on the other social media platform too.

For example, Starbucks also started their promotion activity on Weixin to Chinese people, but it's a one of representative example of O2O marketing.

Weixin will certainly accelerate their O2O marketing solutions this year, so more companies will start their marketing activity on Weixin this year.

I think that 2013 will become the challenge year for Weibo, and it will become emerging year for Weixin.

Weibo, for example Sina Weibo already started the monetization like "WeiboWallet", Ads on their platform, "Weibo Club" and so forth. But these can not get the success without increasing the number of user and online active user rate. This is also true for other Weibo provider, such as Tencent.

But on the other hand, Weixin also cannot relax their guard.

Because the similar service, such as LINE and Kakao Talk also watch vigilantly for a chance to enter Chinese Social Media market. And furthermore, there is a possibility that completely different social media platform may suddenly appear like a comet this year.

I would like to continue watching the trend of Social Media in China, mainly Weibo and Weixin(including other IM tools) this year too. But in the last, I would like to introduce the service that I personally expect in 2013.

1. LBS advertising

Actually, it is similar to O2O marketing by QR code. But I would like to define that O2O and LBS is separately. The market of LBS advertising in China was rapidly growing in the 2011 as I explained before. The report for 2012 is not published yet, but according to the report by CNNIC, mobile device became the top of all method connecting to the internet on 2012 Jun.

And the growth speed of mobile internet user in 2013 will be faster than last year. So mobile Ads, especially this LBS Ads will be more popular in China.

2. Enterprise Social Networking (Enterprise Collaboration tools)

As I explained before, the Enterprise Social Networking(ESN) market in China is rapidly growing, and it is estimated that this market growth rate will be 246% in 2012 by CCW Research. And ESN tool is suitable to the circumstance and culture for business in China.

More and more many company started to provide the ESN tools in China. And foreign company such as Salesforce, Yammer, IBM also may be watching vigilantly for a chance to enter this market in China.

So watching from the point of view by the user side and the provider side, it can be said that the popularity of ESN will be more and more rising this year.

Sina Weibo strengthen marketing support service for corporate users. Can these services become also the foothold of their monetization?

As I explained before, Sina Weibo already started some activity of monetization on their platform. And they recently started some marketing support service for corporate users, so I would like to introduce typical 3 services.

1. Advertising Center

This service is a one of promotional tweet, and is similar to the service that Twitter or Facebook already provided. This service is a one of promotional tweet, and is similar to the service that Twitter or Facebook already provided. 

I asked its cost to the customer center of Sina Weibo, but they said that its cost will be decided after Chinese new year. But the calculation method of its cost is already decided, and there are two calculation method as follows.

CPM : The number that was read of relevant tweet

CPE : The number that was forwarded of relevant tweet, or the number that was clicked link in relevant tweet, etc.

2. Wei-task(Micro task)

This is like a matching service between corporate users and general users who would like to earn money on Weibo.

Corporate user give the task(such as forwarding the relevant tweet or post the relevant contents) to the general users, and its cost will be decided on the basis of the followers number that the relevant general users have or other factor.

3. SMS marketing

This service have three type of sending the message to general users.

1. Register the phone number that already knows.

2. At first post the recruitment messages (such as "Please become a target user of sending SMS announce. If you will become it, then you have a chance to get the luxurious prize", etc. ) on the Weibo.

3. Using the list of advertisement agencies.

In case of this sample, the cost of one message is 0.6RMB(= 0.1 USD) per a person.

As I explained before, SMS is the most popular communication method of mobile devices in China. And this is also the effective method to reach the user who rarely login to Weibo.

Of course, Sina Weibo would like to accelerate their monetization, but I think that these service are also good for the company who would like to strengthen marketing activity to Chinese market on Weibo. 

Source => Sina Weibo