Weibo Desktop Client Tops 1.15 Million Users, Growing Fast [UPDATED]

You may recall that back in late June Sina launched a free Weibo desktop application for PC users called, fittingly, “Weibo Desktop.” In addition to all the regular Sina Weibo goodies you’d expect, the program also offers instant messaging, customizable colors, and more. You can find details in our review here.

So, Weibo Desktop has been in the wild for fifty days now. How’s it doing? Really well, it turns out. Sina announced today that the client now has over 1.15 million users. It’s apparently growing at a rate of more than 20,000 users per day, and has an active user rate that is “leading other desktop client products.”

That may be vague PR-speak, but 1.15 million users are no joke for a just-released-and-still-in-beta desktop microblogging client. 1.15 million users are also no joke for Tencent, whose own desktop IM client QQ has seen users’ online time decrease over the last quarter for the first time in nearly a decade. Could Weibo Desktop’s built-in IM capabilities have something to do with people chatting less on QQ?

It’s tough to know, but Sina is not taking this foray into the instant messaging market lightly. In fact, Weibo Desktop was updated just a few days ago, and the most significant improvement Sina made with the patch was to Weibo Desktop’s IM system. It still lacks the depth and feature set of QQ — the lack of video chat is an especially glaring difference at the moment — but given Chinese netizen’s appetite for Weibo, features may be less important to users than being on the same service as their friends.

And with QQ users’ online time decreasing and Weibo Desktop already above 1.15 million users and growing fast, it’s beginning to look like that service may be Sina Weibo.

Note: In the version of this article that was originally published, we mistakenly reported that Weibo Desktop had 115 million users. The actual number is 1.15 million, not 115. Decimal points are important!

[Via Sina Tech]