Twitter is flatlining, but new numbers show Weibo is still growing

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While Twitter is flatlining, seeing zero growth in the second half of 2015, China’s Weibo is still managing to grow. Weibo’s newest earnings report shows that the service now has 236 million monthly active users (MAUs).

During the same period that Twitter stalled, the China-centric Weibo added 12 million new MAUs.

Weibo is defying the odds by still growing in the face WeChat.

While there’s pretty much no direct competition between Twitter and its Chinese clone, it shows that Alibaba-backed Weibo is defying the odds by still growing in the face of an extremely strong rival. For Twitter that’s Facebook; for Weibo it’s WeChat.

While WeChat is even bigger with 650 million MAUs at the last count, Weibo is still managing to get people to be active rather than watch passively, which appears to be an issue for Twitter. Chinese New Year was a prime example – on the eve of the lunar New Year and at the peak of the festivities, Weibo saw 134 million active individuals share 51.9 million posts. On that important evening, its engaged users were up 31 percent on the previous Chinese New Year’s Eve.

Weibo’s full Q4 earnings report is here.

See: China sold almost 500m smartphones in 2015, and other crazy data