Sina Weibo only 5% users to send original content

Absrtact: April 11 News, through a new study of Weibo, Sina Weibo's business may be far less influential than the company announced earlier. The Twitter-like microblogging platform has dramatically changed the way Chinese news has traditionally been reported over the past 5 years.

On the April 11 news, Sina Weibo's business may have far less influence than the company announced earlier, through a new study of microblogs.

The Twitter-like microblogging platform has dramatically changed the way Chinese news has traditionally been reported over the past 5 years.

Figuring out how many users are using Twitter is hard: Marketers have built millions of zombie accounts to create fictitious followers of celebrities and brands, and millions of spam accounts generate automated messages.

A study by Fu King-wa, an assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong's journalism and media Research Fu Jinghua, showed that about tens of millions of users created 94% of the information on the platform, and about 200 million users mostly forwarded it.

Fu Jinghua in order to measure the actual use of Weibo, it is first to understand how many users actually publish information. He created an automated program to browse thousands of Weibo accounts to see if they were ever used.

The survey found that 58.8% of the accounts did not send a microblog before January 3 this year.

If this ratio is true, it would mean about 500 million of the accounts, a total of about 300 million Weibo accounts are empty. These accounts were never used to post information or to delete posts.

Fu Jinghua continued to study the 208.7 million accounts posted, and found that about 93.8% of the tweets were transferred from 10.4 million accounts, which accounted for 5% of active users. The remaining 198.3 million most of the accounts are reproduced only do not publish original.

Last week, when Sina Weibo submitted documents to be listed on the Nasdaq, the description of the number of users in its prospectus was controversial. Finding a way to accurately calculate the number of Sina Weibo users is important for evaluating its stock value.

Since last year, Sina Weibo has had to face the impact of Tencent's micro-credit. According to a document submitted by Sina Weibo to the Securities and Exchange Commission last week, the market is valued at $3.9 billion trillion.

In the paper, Sina Weibo says its users are growing rapidly. As of last December, the platform's active users were 129.1 million, up 33.5% from a year earlier, and active users grew 36.1% to 61.4 million, a figure that surpassed the total population of Italy.

Fu Jinghua pointed out that Sina Weibo's definition of active users is questionable. "Sina Weibo only sees how many people log on to the platform at least once a month," Fu Jinghua said. However, logging does not mean that the user will actually use the service. ”

According to data from China's Network Information Center, the number of microblogging users in China is declining. At the end of 2013, China had only 281 million microblogging users, down 9% from the previous year. However, the agency did not give a source of data.

Its value depends on the influence of Weibo and the growing number of Chinese netizens, Sina Weibo said in a related document.

Last October, the definition of active users in the US social network Twitter was also controversial.

Some observers point out that the government's increased management of marketing companies is also one reason for the decline in the number of Twitter users.

Some analysts, however, think Sina Weibo's value is undervalued. Henry Guo Jian Capital Global Investment Research analyst estimates that Sina Weibo should be valued at $5 billion trillion. Weibo, he argues, will not be replaced by other social platforms such as micro-letters.

In Tuesday, the Sina Investor Relations Office phone was not connected and did not respond to requests for comment.