Sina Weibo Hits 140 Million Users

In its Q1 2011 financial results announcement, Sina revealed that its microblog, Sina Weibo, surpassed the 140 million registered users mark. The figure was up by about 40 million from the previous report.

In the last couple of months, Sina has made several important changes to its microblog, including an official Weibo.com domain and iPhone app with an English interface.

Back in March, iResearch stated that Sina held 56 percent of China’s microblog market share. Tencent, on the other hand, held 21 percent. We were told by the folks at Tencent that their Weibo has about 160 million users when we visited their office recently in Beijing. Despite having more registered users, Sina Weibo triumphs Tencent Weibo in microblog stickiness, commanding 86 percent of total browsing time, according to the same report.

“The momentum for Weibo adoption is building across China. With the launch of the official Weibo.com, registered users for Weibo recently surpassed 140 million. We hope to ride this momentum and further expand Weibo’s user base and user stickiness by significantly increasing our investment in the coming quarters,” said Charles Chao, CEO of Sina in the financial statement.

Momentum is indeed building up as microblogs become China’s third favorite online news sources. We’re also seeing more competitors joining the microblog bandwagon. At this rate, it is highly possible that Sina Weibo could hit the 200 million users milestone by the end of this year.

However, the number registered users for microblogs should always be taken with a pinch of salt. As Kai Lukoff of iChinaStock commented, “It was not revealed what percentage of Sina Weibo’s 140 million registered users are active users. For comparison purposes, Twitter claims 200 million registered users worldwide, but its active users are often estimated to be about 10-20% of that, or 20-40 million.”