According to research firm Hitwise, Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter-clone so to speak, accounted for 1 in every 158 Internet visits in China, making it bigger than Twitter itself in any other country in the world.
The data, accurate as of April 2011, shows that China is one of the most active micro-blogging nations worldwide, with a greater market share of visits than Twitter in the UK, US, France, Canada, Australia or India.
Sina Weibo has been consistently rolling out with new features that are unique to its original US-counterpart. The microblogging service is definitely one of the most innovative in the industry with proven success, currently growing at around 10 million users per month.
Sina CEO Charles Chao believes that microblogging will actually be one of the key factors in the development of mobile Internet and 3G in China.
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Earlier this month, Chao stated that Sina is already planning for the commercialization of its microblogging service. Evidently enough, it has been aggressive early on this year, first by moving to a new domain, Weibo.com, and recently by introducing an English version of its iPhone app, both of which have caused speculation of an IPO spin-off, or even the possibility of going head on against Twitter.
With more than 140 million Chinese people using Sina Weibo, the effects of 140-character bursts of information are changing processes and communication across the nation, and China is definitely receiving it well. More than 50% of users access the Weibo microblogging platform via mobile, and that approximately 50 million messages are being posted daily.
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