Hisham Sarwar
Weibo vs Twitter
China’s Weibo Mobile active users (MAU) exceeds Twitter’s (MAU). Twitter is banned in China and the fact that a mobile app (pretty similar to Twitter) has more engagement on a monthly basis then Twitter’s worldwide (MAU) tells us a lot of China’s internet connected mobile audience. It’s market penetration is similar to that of the Twitter’s in USA.
According to the research in 2011, 56.5% of the micro blogging market in China was based on Weibo’s active users. According to the statistics of second quarter of 2016, Weibo has 89% of the MAUs on mobile. The users of this network include Asian celebrities, movie stars, famous business, media figures, athletes, scholars, artists, organizations, and many of the officials from Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Macau, and Taiwan. These famous celebrities have millions of followers which are coming as an advantage to Weibo.
Many features of Sina Weibo are similar to Twitter. It has produced various platforms that can used to access the social networking website. Android, Blackberry OS, iOS, Symbian S60, Windows Mobile and Windows Pone are all the popular platforms for this purpose.
Launched in August 2009 due to temporary blocking of Twitter, Sina Weibo is fast approaching 100 million users whereas Twitter has more than 200 million users globally. Twitter and Facebook have been blocked since then; therefore Weibo is continuously being used by influential bloggers and media elites.
There is a food of thought here for Pakistani Startup, if a product is robust it can have all the legs to become popular and get recognition worldwide.
