The Twitter War in China

In a race to gain supremacy in China’s microblog sector, Sina Weibo, Sohu.com and Tencent are giving all out to win the battle. The fight intensified about 2 weeks ago during Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day.

For its Valentine’s Day special, Sohu first rolled out a matchmaking program in mid January, which saw over 400,000 followers and 10,000 applicants for the matchmaking dates.

In response, Sina Weibo launched a lucky draw campaign earlier this month in which users can take part only by inviting friends to register for Weibo accounts. The campaign helped Sina gained up to 2.6 million users. On a fair note, Sina generously sent out over 4 million gifts to its users.

Tencent, on the other hand, chose to work with the media to stream its microblog content with television partners during Chinese New Year. The result of the partnership wasn’t revealed

Analysys International, a Chinese research company, forecasted that there would be 145 million microblog users by the end of 2011, reported Sina. As I believe, the focus for microblogs in China has always been “product first, revenue later”. That is at least the case for Sina Weibo:

“Revenues and profits can be guaranteed so long as we have a large number of users and form a big ecosystem,” said Charles Cao, CEO of Sina Corporation.

Sina Weibo currently leads the microblog sector in China with more than 50 million users across China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Sina has recently turned its microblog into an open platform to provide developers with the flexibility to create applications for its users. On business model, Sina Weibo is looking at advertising and content partnership. No concrete plans were announced yet.

While the current situation may seem rosy for Sina, the microblog battle is still far from over as long as Tencent remains in the game.

“Sina is in a dominant position currently, and its open strategy also fits the development of micro blogging, but Tencent, having a (600 million) large user base with its instant message system QQ, should not be downgraded,” said Li Tianfeng, an analyst with Analysys International.

With the microblog battle in the U.S settled, it is China’s turn to be under the limelight. Who will be the “Twitter of China”: Sina Weibo, Tencent or others?

Image courtesy of Marbridge Consulting