CIC released the "China Social Media Landscape 2014" that can help you to understand easily the whole situation of China's social media trend.

CIC has released the graph of "China Social Media Landscape" since 2008, but its new version was also released today.

Last year, this graph was divided by 24 categories. But this year was decreasing to 18 categories.

This change detail is:
[Deleted categories]     Social Aggregator, Social Search and Social TV
[Added category]          Short-video Social
[Changed categories]  Rating & Review -> Social Life, Photo Sharing -> Photo Social, Online Travel -> Travel Social

The category of 'Social Aggregator' means the RSS reader, but as you know, Google Reader already stopped their service last year. And there are no remarkable other service, so that category itself might be deleted.

And 'Social Search' and 'Social TV' was added as the new category last year, but it may be that these weren't growing as well as they expected.

About the new added category 'Short-video Social', I think that Vine is the most popular service in the world-wide, but the similar service was becoming popular in China too from the latter half of last year.


As I said above, this graph can help you to understand the whole situation of China's social media trend. But if you look the history of this graph from 2008, it also can help you to understand the ups and downs of China's social media trend.

If you are interested in this, please check the article that I wrote last year :)


Source -> CIC

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

An ambush who will beat WeChat? LBS and Chat tool "MoMo" already got over 100 million registered users.

"MoMo" is an instant messenger apps that have the feature of closely linked with LBS function.

According to the news, that "MoMo" already got the more than 100 million users. "MoMo" started their service from Aug 2011, so it means that it took around 30 months to exceed 100 million users. It took the time about twice than WeChat, but it is the fact that it's valuable thing to get the 100 million users.

And the news also said that the active users of "MoMo" was 40 million people, and the registered users increase 1 million people each in every month.

And it seems that their business performance side is also satisfactory, they already got the second round investment on Oct 2012, and it is estimated that their enterprise value is about 100 million USD.


It's the first time that I explain about this "MoMo", so I would like to introduce briefly the summary of its function.

It seems that MoMo provides the service to Android, iPhone and Windows phone users now.

As I said above, the greatest feature of "MoMo" is the linkage with LBS functions, so the top page is the "people nearby" function that is similar with WeChat has.

And on the chat page, the user can directly send the location information to other users.

Of course, the user can send the text message, and also can send the pictures, emotion icon and so forth as same as WeChat.


And MoMo also has a lot of other functions that closely linked with the LBS function. For example, it is the nearby event information, the group function of going to the same hometown and so forth.

 

MoMo also have the social function like the "Moments" on WeChat.

Last time, I said that WeChat belongs the "social media service that directed inward". But it seems that this "MoMo" also has the elements of "social media service that directed outward".

As the competitor of WeChat, I have introduced Yixin or Laiwang on this blog. But Yixin said that their target is to get the 100 million registered users after 6 months later when their service started. But there is no official announcement about this till now. And about Laiwang, they said that their target is to get the 100 million registered users till the end of 2014.

As far as looking this situation, it may be also said that the greatest rival of WeChat is this "MoMo" at this stage. I would like to keep more attention to this "MoMo" from now on.


Well, this "MoMo" can be registered from out of China too.

So the person who can understand the Chinese menu, let's try it :)
* Unfortunately, it seems that "MoMo" does not support the language besides Chinese at this stage.


Source => 21CN tech, The official page of MoMo

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)