Weibo’s monthly active users (“MAUs”) grew to 516 million in December 2019, a net addition of approximately 54 million users year-over-year. Mobile MAUs represented 94% of MAUs.
What is Weibo (Sina Weibo)?
Weibo, short for MicroBlog and renamed after "Sina Weibo", is one of the top social networking platform in China with 462 million monthly active users. Users can publish posts and follow other users, celebrities, businesses, and government agencies on Weibo.
It can be accessed at Weibo.com and Weibo.cn for mobile; its service can also be accessed on mobile apps (iPhone, Android, iPad, and etc.). Weibo app is among the top mobile apps in China by MAUs.
Both Weibo.com and its mobile apps provide three languages: simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, and English. If you need Weibo English version, you can either select the language at the bottom of Weibo.com or go to settings of Weibo app.
China microblogging market used to have four players: Sina Weibo launched in 2009 by Sina, Tencent Weibo, Netease Weibo, and Sohu Weibo. None gained much popularity but Sina Weibo, which was later on rebranded as Weibo and listed on NASDAQ:WB in 2014.
Weibo Users. Weibo has regular users, verified individual users with an orange V icon, organizations and companies with a blue V icon, and paid VIP members with extra features.
Main Features. Besides following other users and publishing Weibo posts under 2,000 Chinese characters (limited to 140 initially), users can also perform live broadcasting, buy and sell products, start polls, play games, upload short videos, and make money via advertisements, paid posting, monetary rewards by other users, and paid subscriptions.
Weibo vs. WeChat. Weibo is often compared with WeChat. But, Weibo started as a microblogging platform like Twitter; and, WeChat started as an instant messenger app and expanded with the social networking feature under WeChat Moments.
By nature, the two are different. A WeChat user is connected with much more family members, friends, colleagues, and business associates than a Weibo user. Hence, it’s not surprising to see much higher engagements and more monthly active users on WeChat. However, Weibo is a more public platform and most published posts are visible to the public while WeChat posts on Moments are only visible to mutually connected users.
Weibo statistics: Weibo MAU since 2013 Q4 2018, Q3 2018, Q2 2018, Q1 2018, Q4 2017, Q2 2017, Q1 2017, Q4 2016, Q3 2016, Q2 2016, Q1 2016, Q4 2015, Q3 2015, Q2 2015, Q1 2015
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