Sina’s Weibo microblogging service isn’t even available in English yet – but that hasn’t stopped it reaching 200 million users in two years, nor from flaunting that growth in the heart of New York.
The firm took out this, seven-storey ad on the Nasdaq’s MarketSite Tower in Times Square to declare it’s reached its milestone of matching Twitter for size: “Share Happiness With 200 Million People Here: Weibo.com…”
Sina wants to launch Weibo in international markets. Its milestone is significant because it shows Weibo is now as big as Twitter, which took five years to reach the 200 million milestone. Sina (NSDQ: SINA), a diversified web portal operator, is public on the Nasdaq with a market cap approaching $6 billion.
China’s Xinhua news agency is also now advertising in Times Square.
Weibo is the biggest of what is a blossoming Chinese microblog sector, in which providers like Weibo are more full-featured than relatively spartan Twitter. So successful is it, the big Baidu (NSDQ: BIDU) service just announced it would shut its own.
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