Sina Weibo is IPO-ing now!

We are monitoring this historical event in Chinese social media live using the newest technology product Pulse, which automatically mines thousands and thoudsands of social media posts every minute and shows the dynamic trends of the sentiments and buzz of the topic WeiBo IPO from social media discussions.

Pulse of Sina Weibo IPO

Sina Weibo has its great success in public social media domain.  It also has come across a number of severe challenges, so severe that at one point it almost could not financially survive if not for the timely injection of a big investment from the influential IT giant Alibaba and its legendary founder Ma Yun (Jack Ma).  

Sina Weibo has played a key role in Chines public opinions and social life, having provided an open platform forsocial media VIPs (called big Vs in China for verified IDs who have thousands or even millions of followers) as well as ordinary Netizens to follow currentevents interactively.  In a country where the official media are tightly controlled by government, this channel is almost the only outlet for people to air opinions instantly and relatively freely.  Sina Weibo had been dominating Chinese social media until more recently another social network, named WeChat by Tencent (a wireless social media offering, the top app in smartphones, with similar but more comprehensive functionality of Facebook and WhatsApp combined), was gaining crazy popularity.  Since then analysts observe that WeChat indeed has taken away some users from Weibo.  However,WeChat serves fundamentally a different role in social media than Weibo does. WeChat is mainly for a private social network for mobile users while Weibo has always been the primary platform for public network.  There are no signs of any other offering that can even get close to Sina Weibo for the impact on public opinions and social events.  

A big challenge is still in their business model and how quickly and effectively they can turn their huge user base into a money-making business.  They have reported profits at some period of time, but most of the history shows the opposite: the bigger their business becomes with larger user base, the more they lose money. Nevertheless, as many analysts are optimistic on their future as those who are losing the patience in their abilities of maintaining a sustainable business.  Put that in the perspectives of the recent volatility of Twitter stocks, it is expected that the Sina Weibo IPO may well turn out to be a path of big ups and downs, and may even repeat the Facebook setback in the initial months of the IPO.  Nevertheless, just like Facebook who eventually recovered from the IPO disaster, Sina Weibo with its unique impact on Chinesesocial life and market has all the characteristics of standing as a long-termvalue investments.  

This is Wei Li reporting live from nowhere in America. (I am actually on a campus trip accompanying my daughter in her final selection of where to spend her next four years of college life.)

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