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Sina's new Weibo version may shake Tencent QQ
September 30, 2011, Friday
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MICROBLOGGING may have become all the rage among Internet users in China, but one of the biggest operators in the quick-word realm is looking to expand beyond the traditional definition of Twitter-style communications.
Sina Corp, a giant of China's Internet realm and the operator of the Weibo microblogging service, is adding new functions aimed at creating an even bigger social networking platform, which could shake Tencent's dominant position in the social networking market.
Earlier this month, Sina started to roll out a newer version of Weibo on an invitational basis. It allows a user to see how many of his friends are online and then chat with them through a pop-up window at the bottom of the web page.
Two-year-old Weibo, which had 200 million registered users at the end of the first half of this year, has become popular with urban office workers and others who want to communicate with friends and family through short postings and sometimes images uploaded through mobile phones.
"Weibo has provided a communication tool for any person, anytime and anywhere, with the popularity of smartphones," said Mao Taotao, an official with Sina's microblogging department.
More than half of Weibo users are posting from mobile phones or tablet computers.
By contrast, Twitter, which is not accessible in China, encourages users to upload pictures to third party websites and share the links in their postings, thereby ensuring the brevity and simplicity of each posting.
Sina began its venture into microblogging by allowing comments and re-postings that encouraged more user interactivity, rejecting Twitter's concept of one-way information spreading.
In the new version of Weibo, the layout of the web page has been turned into a three-column design with a new stream, or updates from the people one follows, in the middle.
The left column give users' recent activities, including photos uploaded, connections to online games and other mobile applications. That gives users convenient access to microblogging and uploading pictures using their smartphones.
On the right side, the system highlights hot issues or interesting users that may be linked to friends and followers.
Pictures and documents can now also be sent through direct messaging, making the exchange of ideas and information more convenient.
The new version of Weibo is seen by many industry analysts as an ambitious move to try to snatch users from rival Tencent's social networking service.
"We hope to provide a better user experience and let users develop more social relationships and stay on our platform longer," Sina said in an e-mail reply to interview requests about its future product development.
The new version of Weibo also will let users to connect more easily to services provided by third-party software developers, Sina said.
It appears to me that Weibo is seeking to break down the barriers of communications between people who don't necessarily know each other well but share common interests.
But it won't be easy to supplant communication tools that allow more intimate sharing of experiences and feelings.
Sometimes people who don't really know each other well may be willing to discuss mutual interests on Weibo, but that is hardly likely to replace the closer social relationships among friends, colleagues and family members available on other sites.
Is Sina trying too hard to be all things to all people?
"There are certainly drawbacks to Sina's becoming 'heavier,' which may satisfy its own interests in building a social networking platform but may not satisfy the needs of users," said Hong Bo, an independent industry commentator.
"People embraced Twitter for its brevity and simplicity, but if that format becomes full of irrelevant commercial information or gaming sections, it could easily lose its advantage," he added.
It's hard to imagine people wanting to talk about private topics or upload family pictures to a totally open platform like Weibo.
"We already have Renren, where we can upload pictures and connect with friends," said Frank Huang, an engineer with an animation company in Shanghai. "What's the point of Sina making Weibo more complicated and providing something similar to Renren?"
Hu Longfei, a researcher with iChinastock.com, a website that tracks overseas-listed Chinese companies, said Sina is obviously bent on expansion.
"If Sina wants to further expand its user base, it has to include more value-added services, including online gaming, to appeal to users in the second- and third-tier cities, where Tencent is taking the market lead in terms of user numbers," Hu said.
In those smaller inland cities, Tencent's QQ free instant messaging system has become a popular mode for chatting with friends. QQ has added online shopping, online video, music streaming and photo sharing to keep users on the platform longer.
Its online community QZone had more than 530 million active users by the end of the first half.
"Although Sina's Weibo platform looks increasingly strong, the scale of Tencent and its reach into smaller cities means it can't be easily written off, said Sam Flemming, founder of CIC, a Shanghai-based social media research firm. "QQ instant messaging and user numbers are strong and will remain so."
Unlike social networking services that allow users to decide who sees their posting and pictures, microblogging allows all registered users to see what everyone else posts.
"The microblog remains a broadcast medium, meaning users can receive information from people they follow easily and quickly," Flemming said.
"The additional features of Sina will certainly make it more sticky, but the real-world based relationships at the heart of systems like Renren will continue," Flemming pointed out.
Sina Corp, a giant of China's Internet realm and the operator of the Weibo microblogging service, is adding new functions aimed at creating an even bigger social networking platform, which could shake Tencent's dominant position in the social networking market.
Earlier this month, Sina started to roll out a newer version of Weibo on an invitational basis. It allows a user to see how many of his friends are online and then chat with them through a pop-up window at the bottom of the web page.
Two-year-old Weibo, which had 200 million registered users at the end of the first half of this year, has become popular with urban office workers and others who want to communicate with friends and family through short postings and sometimes images uploaded through mobile phones.
"Weibo has provided a communication tool for any person, anytime and anywhere, with the popularity of smartphones," said Mao Taotao, an official with Sina's microblogging department.
More than half of Weibo users are posting from mobile phones or tablet computers.
By contrast, Twitter, which is not accessible in China, encourages users to upload pictures to third party websites and share the links in their postings, thereby ensuring the brevity and simplicity of each posting.
Sina began its venture into microblogging by allowing comments and re-postings that encouraged more user interactivity, rejecting Twitter's concept of one-way information spreading.
In the new version of Weibo, the layout of the web page has been turned into a three-column design with a new stream, or updates from the people one follows, in the middle.
The left column give users' recent activities, including photos uploaded, connections to online games and other mobile applications. That gives users convenient access to microblogging and uploading pictures using their smartphones.
On the right side, the system highlights hot issues or interesting users that may be linked to friends and followers.
Pictures and documents can now also be sent through direct messaging, making the exchange of ideas and information more convenient.
The new version of Weibo is seen by many industry analysts as an ambitious move to try to snatch users from rival Tencent's social networking service.
"We hope to provide a better user experience and let users develop more social relationships and stay on our platform longer," Sina said in an e-mail reply to interview requests about its future product development.
The new version of Weibo also will let users to connect more easily to services provided by third-party software developers, Sina said.
It appears to me that Weibo is seeking to break down the barriers of communications between people who don't necessarily know each other well but share common interests.
But it won't be easy to supplant communication tools that allow more intimate sharing of experiences and feelings.
Sometimes people who don't really know each other well may be willing to discuss mutual interests on Weibo, but that is hardly likely to replace the closer social relationships among friends, colleagues and family members available on other sites.
Is Sina trying too hard to be all things to all people?
"There are certainly drawbacks to Sina's becoming 'heavier,' which may satisfy its own interests in building a social networking platform but may not satisfy the needs of users," said Hong Bo, an independent industry commentator.
"People embraced Twitter for its brevity and simplicity, but if that format becomes full of irrelevant commercial information or gaming sections, it could easily lose its advantage," he added.
It's hard to imagine people wanting to talk about private topics or upload family pictures to a totally open platform like Weibo.
"We already have Renren, where we can upload pictures and connect with friends," said Frank Huang, an engineer with an animation company in Shanghai. "What's the point of Sina making Weibo more complicated and providing something similar to Renren?"
Hu Longfei, a researcher with iChinastock.com, a website that tracks overseas-listed Chinese companies, said Sina is obviously bent on expansion.
"If Sina wants to further expand its user base, it has to include more value-added services, including online gaming, to appeal to users in the second- and third-tier cities, where Tencent is taking the market lead in terms of user numbers," Hu said.
In those smaller inland cities, Tencent's QQ free instant messaging system has become a popular mode for chatting with friends. QQ has added online shopping, online video, music streaming and photo sharing to keep users on the platform longer.
Its online community QZone had more than 530 million active users by the end of the first half.
"Although Sina's Weibo platform looks increasingly strong, the scale of Tencent and its reach into smaller cities means it can't be easily written off, said Sam Flemming, founder of CIC, a Shanghai-based social media research firm. "QQ instant messaging and user numbers are strong and will remain so."
Unlike social networking services that allow users to decide who sees their posting and pictures, microblogging allows all registered users to see what everyone else posts.
"The microblog remains a broadcast medium, meaning users can receive information from people they follow easily and quickly," Flemming said.
"The additional features of Sina will certainly make it more sticky, but the real-world based relationships at the heart of systems like Renren will continue," Flemming pointed out.
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