According to Wunderlich, Sina’s Weibo, a Twitter esque microblogging site, has become a smash hit in China with Weibo taking dominant market share in terms of registered users and activity. Sina did some extensive research on how Facebook, Apple’s App store and Twitter operate for potential monetization possibilities (advertising, subscription fees). The Weibo platform can be a game changer if it can successfully integrate optimal features from the popular U.S. social networking sites and figure out how to monetize its users and traffic. Sina (SINA) stock is up 9.56% today on more than 5 times the average trading volume while Baidu (BIDU) and Sohu (SOHU) were in the red. Sohu has its own extremely popular microblogging platform, Baidu is the undisputed Chinese internet search leader with the resources to innovate and Tencent (0700.hk) is an Internet juggernaut with the ability to influence and acquire. It will be interesting to see what happens with Weibo’s potential and how the competitive Chinese social networking landscape pans out. Facebook, Twitter and other popular social networking sites from the West are currently blocked by the THE GREAT FIREWALL OF CHINA but there are some shrewd Chinese netizens that know their way around it.
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