Look at the new trend, even if it's his own life.

Absrtact: Sina CEO Cao Chao last May, Sina (Nasdaq:sina) stock price is still hovering around 35 U.S. dollars, at that time, the most optimistic estimate is only Sina's share price can be about 53 dollars. But since last July, Sina's share price continued to rise, to last week, Sina shares

Sina CEO Cao Chao

Last May, Nasdaq:sina's share price hovered around $35 trillion, when investment banks ' most optimistic estimate was that Sina's share price could be around $53. But since last July, Sina's share price continued to rise, to last week, Sina's stock price reached 94.3 U.S. dollars, a record high.

Weibo is undoubtedly the biggest contributor to the surge in Sina's value. James Li Hu of CLSA, said: "Sina Weibo service launched only a year, registered users have reached 40 million people (last October has reached 50 million). Investors are generally excited about the prospect of direct marketing via Sina Weibo. ”

In Sina CEO Charles Chao sketched blueprint, with a large user base Weibo, will give Sina new profit model ——— Sina has not been good at the search, E-commerce, games and other fields, can be grafted with micro-bo, the development of a new business model. He even stressed that to see the new trend of the big layout "even if it is the life of their own."

Look at the new trend, even if it's his own life.

Southern Metropolis Daily: Last May, I saw investment banks optimistic about the value of Sina's share price of about 53 dollars, but now, Sina's share price has exceeded 90 dollars, what do you think is the factor to enhance Sina's values? Where is Sina's core competitiveness?

Cao Chao: This is actually the market for micro-blogging, social networking, mobile Internet development trends, not only for domestic enterprises. Facebook, a social-networking site, was estimated at $50 billion a two-month ago and is now close to 80 billion dollars. And Twitter, which was valued at $4 billion last December, has reached 8 billion to 10 billion dollars in recent acquisitions.

Sina's core competitiveness lies in its influence and layout in the new media. It is the portal, blog Galviebo platform, has the broadest channel capacity and strong executive power.

South: There is a view that the vitality of innovation often comes from small companies, and the Big Mac is inevitably facing the decline in innovation and the weakening of innovation motivation, Sina How to maintain its own innovative genes, find and seize market opportunities?

Cao Chao: Is our microblog not innovative? Some say we imitate Twitter, but Sina Weibo's "comment + forward" model, multimedia presentation, are not available on Twitter. Innovation is not a slogan, not simply say I and others are not the same innovation, but to meet the needs of the market and users, in addition, innovation does not mean that there is commercial value.

Of course, it is no easy task for big companies to break through their business models and look for new ones, compared with the unlimited, affordable, small, innovative companies. So Sina Weibo has an independent team to operate, a new system and culture, new incentive mechanism, new mode of operation.

The media has various forms, Sina has the portal, the blog, the microblog, inevitably has the overlapping part, the new pattern will have the impact to the original mode, but we must see the future trend, has the layout in the new domain.

Internet product turnover is very fast, we say "lead 35 years", so if you see that product represents the future trend, even if the life of their own, but also in this field development.

Sina Weibo future money is no problem

Nancy: You have repeatedly mentioned the importance of Weibo to Sina. 2011, NetEase, Sohu will be in the field of micro-blogging catch-up, Tencent recently announced its microblogging users over billion, Sina how to face this competition? How many users are there in Sina Weibo now?

Cao Chao: In foreign countries, a company to innovate a model, other companies will not do, but in China, Internet innovation is difficult to get legal protection, innovation model is easy to replicate, the only barrier is the scale of barriers.

Sina Weibo has attracted the most influential figures, and formed a strong social relationship, has formed a scale barrier. Sina Weibo this original, spontaneous relationship, than some peers by bundling, transfer to the user, loyalty is much higher, vitality is much stronger.

Last October, the number of users of Sina Weibo was 50 million, and the latest data were inconvenient to disclose. You can look at some third party research reports, Sina Weibo in the use of time and other indicators are ahead.

Of course, competition is inevitable, and opponents will increase the cost of competition, to a certain extent diluted users. But Weibo has three core elements: User, user relationship, and information flow. Our users have formed a relatively stable social relationship, and the transfer cost of social relations is very high, so we wholeheartedly to do our own products and services, we can maintain the advantages, have a stronger ability to gather.

Nan du: You said before, don't rush to let micro bo make money, but such a huge user group, give people the imagination space is infinite. When is Sina Weibo going to make money?

Cao Chao: At this stage, we are not too concerned about profitability. Internet experience tells us that the first focus on profitability is a big misunderstanding, many internet companies are in the accumulation of a large user base, only to develop a scalable profit model. Facebook, for example, has a net profit of 600 million dollars last year and is estimated to reach 2 billion dollars this year, and it also uses 5 and 6 years to accumulate users.

The aggregation and scale of users, which is the value of Internet companies. Why the domestic video site is not profitable, but after the market value is high? Why does Twitter go for 45 million dollars a dollar, but the valuations are nearly 10 billion dollars? We must develop products, user experience, and through continuous optimization, expand user Size, in the fastest time to establish a user scale barriers.

As long as a large number of users, the formation of a large ecological circle, Sina Weibo future income and profitability is no problem. So my current energy is mainly to do a good job products and services, do not have a strategic bias.

Nancy: What is the business model of your microblog?

Cao Chao: There are social relationships, there are viscous users have commercial value, you can be based on attributes, behavior, geographical targeted services, and the Internet's profit model is nothing more than advertising, search, E-commerce, games these categories.

Search, Facebook, Twitter, and Sina Weibo also have search capabilities to filter content. Unlike traditional searches, this kind of search represents an instant, real-time search. So we will consider the search, E-commerce, advertising these and micro-blog grafting.

New media and traditional media are complementary and mutually beneficial

South: Sina, Sohu, Tencent are pushing their own local gateway strategy, I would like to ask the comprehensive portal site location is what? Where are the business opportunities?

Cao Chao: The profit way of the portal is the big brand advertisement, but objectively speaking, the local portal's commercial support point is weaker.

We have set up local portals in 5 places in Shanghai, Guangdong, Sichuan, Henan and Fujian, at least 10 more localized websites this year, but not only to do news content, but also to do some localized services, research and development of interactive products, and micro-bo docking, online under the roots. Pure news content is not what the user needs, nor is it the business opportunity.

South: Earlier this month, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp launched the world's first internet-paid newspaper, the Daily Daily, designed for Apple's ipad and other tablet computers, and Murdoch believes the daily is a model for keeping news-gathering business alive in the digital age. What do you think is the path of traditional media transformation to the whole media? Like microblogging such as "from the media", there are new media, traditional media should be how to get along with the ecology?

Cao Chao: I think the traditional media set up a digital platform, on the one hand, can update the information, to make up for the timeliness of newspaper deficiencies, but also to expand the digital distribution channels, is undoubtedly necessary.

But if only the content of the newspaper to move online, made purely content news website, this mode of business opportunities are not many, the number of users to pull the effect is limited, independent existence of little value. Traditional media, especially print media, should be combined with localized business opportunities to diversify their services based on localization requirements and ultimately achieve localized value-added.

As for the relationship between traditional media and new media, network media has been complementary to traditional media from the outset: network media needs the content of traditional media; traditional media need the internet to enlarge its traditional channels and influence. But with the rise of mobile Internet, "Application + platform" brings new development opportunity for plane media, traditional media must break through mobile terminal, the most important is brand, influence and media ability.

South Wangxiaoxing Reporter