Beware Twitter, Sina Weibo is Launching an English Interface This Year

From an English mobile app, to a soon-to-be-launched full-fledged English microblog, Sina is moving full speed ahead. Sina told Reuters that it has more than 10% of its Sina Weibo users based overseas and is looking to attract more international users by introducing an English microblog by the end of this year.

Despite aiming to to serve only the Chinese market to date, Sina Weibo still managed to attract a whopping 140 million users. In contrast, Twitter has about 200 million users with 70 percent of its users based out of the U.S.

We briefly mentioned about the English microblog interface yesterday and also discussed how Sina Weibo and other microblogs are changing China’s online community as a powerful information sharing platform. Perhaps, if Sina’s English microblog becomes a success, it could be THE microblog to change the world’s online community.

Tom Cruise on Sina Weibo

It will be exciting to witness how international users will react to Sina’s English microblog. Francis Tan of The Next Web raised a good point as he questions how Sina Weibo will maintain censorship by going global. There isn’t really an answer to that until we see how Sina handles sensitive issues on its English microblog, which I suppose won’t take too long to happen.

Despite Weibo’s censorship issues, Twitter should be wary about Sina’s English microblog. Pick any Sina Weibo user and most will agree that the service has way better functions than Twitter. Penn Olson’s Charles Custer aptly described it:

“As a user of both, I assure you, if it weren’t for the censorship on Weibo, I’d probably never use Twitter again. Weibo is just better. Pictures, videos, and more can be uploaded directly. Moreover, instead of messy RTs, Sina Weibo has a commenting system that makes sense. It also makes people feel involved.”

I wonder how Twitter will react.