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

The ad sales revenue of Sina Weibo increased 125% compared with the year-earlier period. They will also publish ads API soon.

Sina recently published the performance reporting of Sina Weibo in the third quarter.

This report said that the total revenue of Sina Weibo in the third quarter was 53.4 million USD, and this breakdown is composed of 43.7 million USD ad revenue and 9.7 million USD services revenue.

Their ad revenue increased 125% compared with the year-earlier period, and their service revenue increased 121%, but at the point of comparison with the last quarter, it can be said their service revenue was slight increase.

This service revenue includes the revenue from Weibo Club and the sharing revenue from the apps or games developer, but as I said before, they have to enhance this area to industrialize more than now.

But on the other hand, of course, the ad revenue is the one of important business for Sina Weibo. So they recently announced that they will publish the ad API of Sina Weibo soon.

Their rival 'WeChat' already expressed that they would not like their user to use their platform as a marketing tool. So from this point of view, to become a social marketing platform may be a one of good method for the differentiation with them.


Source => Tencent IT, Lieyun Net

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 of WeChat and Weibo in Social Commerce will be heating up moreover from now on.

Social media and Ecommerce are the hottest market in China, and according to the report by CNNIC, both users increased over 20% compared to the previous year.

And from the late last year, the fusion of social media and Ecommerce were gradually embodied, Sina Weibo actually started to provide the "Weibo Wallet", and they sold Xiaomi mobile on their platform.

Sina Weibo was invested by Alibaba at this April, but the first their collaboration was appeared at this time. It's called "Tuan Mai", and this is the site that the limited item or special priced item are being sold.

Now the limitation item or special priced items are sold one item per a day, but Sina Weibo wish to sell multiple those items on there in the future. But this is only the prologue of their collaboration, and it is said that the custom version of Weibo for Taobao will be released this month or next month.

On the other hand, WeChat also started to accelerate the fusion of WeChat and Ecommerce. As I explained before, WeChat will be added the linkage function with Ecommerce, and they will also formally provide the mobile payment function in the next version of it.

And though it's provide the third party vendor, the new linkage tool of WeChat and Ecommerce was also published now.

This tool is named "V Mall", and it can the user make easier to open their shops and sell the items on WeChat.

Tencent already has their own EC platform "QQ Wanggou", and also has their own payment system "Tenpay". And they already were providing them to their QQ Weibo from the past. So it's no doubt that they will be sure to accelerate this area from now on.

Social commerce is unfailingly the point getter for Weibo and WeChat. So we have to keep watching their actions in this market, and at the same time, we also have to keep the attention whether the other influencer will raise their head or not.

* I'm personally paying attention to the action of Baidu...

Source => ChinaByte, Ifeng net

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

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

Two-thirds people login to a social media everyday in China, but there are only 3% people who are truly in difficulties that if they can't use any social media.

Chinese portal site "Sootoo" provided a interesting report as follows.

Q1. How often do you login to a social media service?

Several times a day     : 51.95%
        Once a day             : 15.06%
Several times a week  : 20.26%
       Once a week           : 3.90%
Less than once a week: 8.83%





This report said that about two-thirds people in China login to an any social media everyday. According to the latest report by CNNIC, many people use a any social media in China. So it can be said that this report followed up the credibility.


Q2. How long times use a social media in a day?

Less than one hour : 39.74%

1 to 2 hours: 40.00%

2 to 4 hours: 17.92%

More than 4 hours : 2.34%





This report said that almost 80% people use a social media less than 2 hours in a day.


Q3. Which social media services do you usually use?

Qzone  : 80.86%
Sina Weibo :  78.72%
Renren : 71.43%
Tencent Weibo :  60.45%
WeChat :  51.83%
Pengyou : 11.45%
Douban :  10.04%
Facebook :  5.45%
Kaixin :  4.96%
Other :  4.05%



This result is very interesting. I thought that the ranking of WeChat is higher than Tencent Weibo, but the result was different at this time.
And other unexpected thing is that the utilization rate of Renren was higher than my expect. Actually, Renren is the biggest SNS provider in China, but the interests of Chinese people is moving from SNS to Weibo or WeChat in few years. So its result is unexpected, and the big difference of RenRen and Kaixin's utilization rate was also unexpected.


4. Which purpose do you use a social media?

To contact with friends : 74.03%
To watch the video or post : 72.99%
To kill time :  63.12%
For hobby :  59.22%
To watch the hot topic :  54.55%
To post own mind :  45.06%
To expand personal connections :  38.70%
To enjoy games :  22.75%
To enjoy apps : 21.56%
To send a gift :  20.38%
For business :  15.58%
To join a event :  10.90%
Other :  0.95%

The answer of enjoying games or apps was lower than my expect. Sina Weibo have provided many games on their platform for a long time, and WeChat also have a plan to provide games on their platform as same as LINE...


Q5. Which devices do you usually use when you login a social media?

Mobile phone :  81.18%

PC :  69.35%

Tablet :  25.81%

Other :  11.83%





As I reported before, mobile devices is already the most popular method to access the internet in China. As a result, it follows that this fact also apply to in case of social media.


Q6. Why did you start using a social media?

Own thoughts :  23.65%
By the recommendation of friends : 26.35%
Many friend already use it :  45.95%
Can contact easily with friends :  43.92%
To expand personal connections :  8.11%
To get the information :  18.24%

Other :  4%


This result said that the almost half people started a social media by the reason related with friends.


Q7. If you weren't able to use a social media, how will you feel?

It's very inconvenient and unacceptable :  3%
Feeling not good, but acceptable : 51%
Feeling nothing at first, but feeling inconvenient not good later :  23%
Already not using it for a long time, so feeling nothing :  18%
Other :  5%

As mentioned in the introduction, two-thirds people use a social media everyday in China. But there are only 3% people who will be truly in trouble with not to use a social media. It's also an unexpected result.


Well, I'm very interested in this result, and furthermore I also would like to look the result in other countries :)


Source : Sootoo

Sina Weibo updated their music service. Will they also start music store like itunes?

Sina Weibo have provided their music service "Wei Music(Micro Music)" since June 2011. But they recently updated its service and at the same time changed its service name to "Music People".

Sina Weibo user can freely listen and manage the music on it. Furthermore, Sina Weibo user also can upload their music.

I think that this upload feature is good for indies musician or band, because they can get a chance to be heard by a lot of Sina Weibo users in the low costs.


But at the same time, I think that Sina Weibo will start to sell the paid music like itunes. There are two reasons that I think so.

1. Monetization is the most important challenge for them in this year.
2. They already started to provide the virtual money on their service, such as Weibi or Weibo Wallet.


The stage is already set. Let's keep the attention continuously to their action.


Source => Music People

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

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

Sina Weibo published the analysis report of corporate official account tweet. This report pointed out that Wednesday and Thursday is the good day for tweet.

As I repeatedly introduced before, now a lot of companies make a official account on Sina Weibo for marketing purpose. And Sina Weibo or other company provided many useful analysis report before, the report that I will introduce today also do not pale so much in comparison to them.

The report that Sina Weibo published is written about the analysis report of corporate official account tweet. And the report is divided into three main part as follows.

1. The analysis by a day of week

The orange colored line graph is the ratio of corporate official account tweet by the day of a week, and the blue colored graph is the ratio of re-tweet by users to them, and green colored graph is the ratio of comment by users to them.


This report defined as follows:
- In case of the numerical value of blue or green line is more than orange graph is the day that is suited to tweet.
- On the other hand, in case of the numerical value of orange graph is more than blue or green graph is the day that is not suited to tweet.

According to this report, Wednesday and Thursday are the suitable day for tweet, and Monday and Tuesday are not the suitable day for tweet, and Friday to Sunday is the even day.

Generally speaking, Monday and Friday is not the suitable day for promotion, but its tendency may also apply to tweet on Weibo.


2. The analysis by timezone of a day. (Weekday)

The define of this graph is also same as above.

According to this data, from 8:00 to 17:00 p.m. is not suitable to tweet, and from 18:00 to 23:00 is suitable to tweet. The report by JiaThis also said that 41% of user post the information to social media at from 18:00 to midnight 2:00, so this late time may be exactly suitable to tweet.


3. The analysis by timezone of a day. (Weekend)

This data doesn't show the remarkable point, but this report said that from 13:00 to 14:00 and from 17:00 to 23:00 of the weekend is suitable to tweet.


This data is also no more than a pointer, but I think that it is worth trying. If there were problem to tweet in the night time or weekend, don't worry about it. Because the tweet reservation system for Weibo will be able to assist you.


Source => Eguan

Chinese mobile SMS was substantially negative growth in 2012. WeChat or Weibo had impact on it?

MIIT released the report that is written about the summary of Chinese mobile SMS, and this report said that the number of SMS messages was 897.31 billion incidents in 2012.

This report also said that the number of Chinese SMS users are 765 million people in 2012. The number of Chinese mobile user was about 1100 million people in the end of 2012, hence it follows that about 70% of mobile users use SMS in China.

Actually SMS is the most popular method of communication by mobile phone in China, and many people use it to send the greeting at holiday or memorial day, such as Chinese new year.

But going back to the subject, the number of SMS messages was increasing only 2.1% compared to 2011. And the number of mobile phone users in China was increasing about 11% compared to the previous year, so it can be said that the number of SMS messages was substantially negative growth in 2012.

One of this reason was the rapid progress of WeChat or Weibo. Mainly young people shifted the communication method on mobile phone from SMS to WeChat or Weibo. WeChat and Weibo already each have over 300 million users, and this growth will continue in 2013. So the number of SMS messages may be truly negative growth in 2013.

Source => cnBeta, Sohu IT

Sina Weibo started testing English page. At first, they target to Southeast Asian countries.

From the year before last, there were rumors that Sina Weibo will start providing English pages in the near future. I'm going to forget that rumor, but they suddenly published their English page for the test.

Because they started preparing the English page a moment ago, actually there are not so many the part that was already translated to English.
Sina Weibo now supports simplified Chinese character and two traditional Chinese character(Taiwan and Hongkong) on their service. And the user can change these three languages at the lower right of top page, but English is not still added at this moment.

A staff of Sina Weibo said that they will not provide this English page to over the world in the early stage, they will provide this to only Southeast Asian countries.

I think this strategy makes sense. Because in Southeast Asian countries, especially in Indonesia, Facebook or LINE, WeChat now started to be welcomed, and their users are rapidly increasing, so it can be said that there is a lot of chance to expand their users.
So it's better that they will widely provide English pages to some Southeast Asian countries at first. And if there will be the specific country that welcome their service, it's better that they will start the second stage of localization.

As I mentioned before, the growth rate of Weibo users are little bit decreasing. So Sina and other Weibo vendor may accelerate the advance into overseas markets this year.


Source => cnBeta, Sina Weibo English test page

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

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

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.