Weibo kicks off 2015 with renewed growth, now has 198M monthly active users

Weibo, the closest thing China has to Twitter, now has 198 million monthly active users, according to the company’s latest earnings report for the first quarter of 2015. That number is up 11.2 percent from 175.7 million in the previous quarter, a rise of 38 percent year-on-year.

Weibo hit 89 million daily active users in March, up 34 percent from the same time last year.

86 percent of of Weibo users access the social network via mobile device. Mobile monthly active users grew 57 percent from the same time last year.

Despite naysayers (including us) dooming Weibo to a slow death, monthly active user growth actually doubled in the last quarter, up from 5.2 percent in Q4 2015. The company also beat revenue expectations, earning US$96.3 million, an increase of 43 percent from the same period last year.

The company still earned a loss of US$2.8 million, but that loss has narrowed fast from US$47.4 million a year ago and US$15.4 million just last quarter. At this rate. Weibo could be in the black again by the time the next quarterly report comes out, when the company estimates net revenues will reach up to US$105 million.

Weibo’s earnings report also hinted that "certain planned initiatives with Alibaba are still expected to begin in the second quarter." Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba invested US$586 million in Weibo in 2013.

Earlier this week, the social network got a boost from Apple CEO Tim Cook, who quickly gained a following of 100,000 users in just 30 minutes.

Weibo is still growing at a slower clip than messaging app WeChat, which has become the social network of choice for most of China’s smartphone generation. WeChat rose to 549 million monthly active users in the first quarter of this year, up 39 percent from the previous quarter.

You can find Weibo’s full Q1 2015 earnings report here.