Netease (NASDAQ: NTES) is famous for its portals and email services. But for microblogging, it is certainly behind Sina and Tencent. Yet in the unaudited financial results Netease released yesterday, it was reported that its microblogging platform has a whopping 88.5 million users, an improvement of 68.6 percent since the second quarter. Wow!
But again, how many of these registered users are active? We did ask, but Netease didn’t reply.
Out of curiosity, I registered an account to check out how Netease Weibo looks and feels. It looks similar to Sina Weibo with similar functions, except that users are allowed to write up to 163 characters for each weibo, which is in line with 163.com, Netease’s domain.
Most of the tech Chinese tech folks are there — For example, 36kr, a popular Chinese tech blog in China has an account but last used Netease Weibo four months ago. The same goes for Lee Kai-fu of Innovation works who last used the service in March this year.
Anyway, it is harsh to bash Netease for its Weibo service since it isn’t at all its core business. Email, news, and games are its core services — there are 430 million Netease email users.
Netease also develops its own games as well as helping other gaming companies to distribute theirs. One of its client, for example, is the super-addictive World of Warcraft MMORPG by Blizzard. The company’s revenue from online gaming hit $1.8 billion RMB, which was 90 percent of its total revenue in the third quarter.
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