The dilemma of Sina Weibo

The value of Sina Weibo has dropped a lot because of successive mismanagement and bad luck, and users have moved from Sina Weibo to Tencent Micro-mail. Sina's central value is about 35 dollars. Investors will even consider whether or not Sina will be wiped out like MySpace.

Sina's share price reached $147 in 2011, when investors hoped that Sina Weibo would achieve three big business values. First, its account system has become a common account system for Chinese users to accept various internet services, by becoming a user platform in the electric business, games and other fields to obtain income sharing; second, the user in the social network left information, can become a variety of valuable business recommendation ads, the basic information, Makes it possible for Sina Weibo to capitalize on Friends ' referral information, as Facebook hopes; third, create a new media through micro-blogging, so as to obtain a large amount of advertising resources, relying on traditional advertising technology to make a profit. Unfortunately, these three efforts have failed or are almost doomed to failure.

The business value of Sina Weibo was hit by the first heavy blow to bad luck. Sina Weibo has become the de facto free media in China as a result of the government's special regulatory policy on the media, and the Chinese government has asked Sina Weibo to establish a real-name system of account authentication and to establish the most advanced network monitoring system to record and monitor users ' behavior. The consequence is that in addition to the pursuit of the greatest speech effects, such as exposing them to unfair, criticizing the government's practices, users do not want to use the most stringent monitoring of the account system, they are unwilling to use the account system to play games, and do not want to use this account system to shopping, Also do not want to use this account system to do the payment. For example, Sina Weibo also occasionally write off the user's account as a penalty for users, this situation, how dare users like Sina Management, the hope that the cash deposited in the micro-bo payment account? If investors visit China, it will be very intuitive to see: a large number of merchants chose Tencent's micro-letter public number as their service account, Users are also using the micro-signal Tencent to register as a member of the merchant.

Sina Weibo's business value has been hit by a second heavy blow to its management's failings and the loss of its private social circle. When Sina Weibo rose in 2011, its users were accustomed to posting information on microblogs that actually belonged to private social circles: photos of their children, food photos of catering parties, information about friends ' gatherings. Chinese users posted private information that was not suitable for public release on Weibo. This is due to the special circumstances of the Chinese Internet market at that time: the high-end users are not willing to use Tencent's QQ social network, that this is for children Entertainment, Weibo is the only information they can release platform, Other social networks, such as Renren, have an almost negligible impact on these users. But Sina's management is not aware of this. While Tencent is developing its micro-credit business to replace its QQ social network, Sina's management is still keen on its social media dream, without making any effective response. Even after Tencent had taken over the market position in the private social arena in 2012, Sina's management is also unaware of the seriousness of the problem, noting that in its 2012 earnings, micro-letters and microblogs have a competitive relationship between users ' use of micro-credit and Weibo.

But the fact is the opposite of what Sina's management estimates are. With the transfer of private social activities to micro-letters, Weibo users are no longer publishing information that has important advertising value, such as their own shopping experience, the evaluation of restaurant food, and increasingly focus on political, social topics. Investors read Sina's CEO Cao Chao's microblog, or their two contact President Du and Xu Liangje Weibo can see this clearly. The immediate problem is that the business value of the recommended information for every user's effective friend in Sina Weibo is almost Nil. Although Sina's management will continue to imitate Facebook's advertising strategy, the objective reality is that they will never have a chance.

The more serious consequence of losing a private social circle is that ordinary users have nothing to say on Sina Weibo that they can say, suitable for publication in the Tencent Micro-trust circle. As a result, Sina Weibo's user stickiness and user activity has significantly declined. Sina's 2012 earnings report continued to grow in number of registered users, and user activity recovered at the end of the year. This data is just a number game. In Sina Weibo, using the keyword "micro bo, the decline in activity," and "Micro Bo, the number of real users" to search, you can see that users are generally negative attitude.

Thus, Sina Weibo, as its management excels, lost most of its social attributes in 2012 and became a social media. A very small number of users publish information that makes up the so-called tuba, which even employs specialized editorial teams and the rest of the users become readers. At the same time, Sina management to take a variety of hope to persuade and force these large cooperation, let it publish advertising information to the Sina fee. Meanwhile, Tencent has seized on the Achilles heel of Sina's loss of a private social circle, launched a micro-credit account of the competition strategy, so, starting from 2012 years of Four seasons, on Sina Weibo can see a dramatic scene, each day, Sina Weibo's these large, all on Sina Weibo posted information, Persuade their fans to immigrate to the micro-mail, tell them their micro-letters account, how to find their own micro-credit account, and notice in the micro-letter will release what they do not publish in Sina Weibo more valuable content.

The third major blow to Sina Weibo came as the market test showed that the commercial value of its display ads was low. 2011 earnings, Sina Management said it wants to start the monetization of micro-blogging, because users in the game shopping and other areas do not accept their account system, so the actual action only left advertising. Sina Weibo made significant changes to its PC page in 2012, but it turns out that because microblogging information is visually highly structured, it is easy for users to turn a blind eye to ads placed on the page. The results of the experiment showed that the display ads around the micro-blog information on the PC page were very bad.

In the face of this dilemma, 2012 years of the Four Seasons, Sina management of micro-blog management has been adjusted to show that in the future to pay attention to mobile. The solution for Sina's management team is to insert ads into the Twitter stream. The results of Sina's 2012 earnings show that the advertising effect is 10 times times better than the previous display ads. Unfortunately, this 10 times-fold advertising, the actual effect is very poor. Information flow ads can ensure that users can see, but the user's fingers can pass through the insertion of the flow of ads, if the user does not want to see, this effect will not exceed a 2 second video ads. And unlike Facebook and Twitter, the 140-word message is about 4 times times as much as the equivalent length of English, so Weibo users are more likely to enter a more content-focused reading when they read Weibo information, This has brought a strong alternative to news portals in China, while also making it easier for users to resent and skim over advertising messages. For example, a Facebook user who looks at a photo of a friend idly and sees a beautiful dress ad may be more likely to browse the ad. And a microblogging user who is seriously reading the bird flu news, she is apt to resent the insertion of advertisements at this time. The experiment that Sina Weibo did in the first quarter of 2013, it is unfortunate to prove this, inserted in the information stream advertisers found that users are so disgusted with their ads, they dare not even allow users to comment on open advertising information, so all the big brands need to do display ads do not dare to cooperate with Sina Weibo to do information flow ads. What is willing to do is just some small advertisers who try to do the shopping effect, such as the small businessman who sells acne ointment. The outcome is natural and tragic for Sina Weibo. But what is even more tragic is that such advertisements are ineffective.

Sina management of this explanation is that, with the user's data analysis, users of advertising aversion and advertising effect will improve. But the opposite may be true. The core factor that determines whether a user is willing to look at ads is not just who they are, what is more important is what the user was doing, we chatted with the wife, we can casually "insert ads" to discuss where the exclusive, but she is looking at her beloved novel, when she went to interrupt most of them will not please. Sina Weibo even knows the user's privacy as much as he does for his employees, does it have a way of guessing what kind of state it is in when users look at Weibo? What's more, Sina Weibo, which is not a display ad, but a shopping ad, loses a private information circle does not have the credibility that users believe, such as Even a user who wants to buy acne cream, even when she is reading Weibo, is just worrying about her acne, she is also unlikely to click on a single purchase just according to Sina Weibo's ads, instead, she will do so after a search comparison in Ali Group's shopping website or in China's most popular search engine. For the advertisers of Sina Weibo, the most common outcome is that they show themselves for a category of products and benefit others. According to the results of the first quarter Sina Weibo display of information flow advertising, Sina Weibo to rely on information flow advertising to make it needed money, must increase the number of ads to the equivalent of suicide.

The ultimate nightmare for Sina investors is that Weibo has been completely replaced. Over the past two quarters, Sina's management has had little to do with the wave of its users to micro-mail immigrants. Just repeatedly said that Sina Weibo and Tencent Micro-letter is two different products, Sina Weibo spread far more than Tencent micro-letter, the two are a complementary relationship. Sina management of this statement, is literally set up. Because Sina Weibo allows forwarding, Tencent micro-mail does not allow forwarding. However, Tencent Micro-letter currently does not offer forwarding capabilities, not for technical reasons, but only a business strategy to consider, the core is not willing to offend the Chinese government politically, but rather let Sina Weibo to make possible political mistakes, while Tencent. The strategy is bound to end at some point, and Tencent, in its 2012 earnings, officially said it was working on a strategy to integrate Tencent's microblog with micro-credit. In action, in addition to encouraging and promoting the immigration wave mentioned earlier, Tencent is still experimenting with its enormous financial resources to carry out a devastating blow to Sina, in 2012, Tencent began experimenting to pay for original information users, 2013 the experiment in a more interesting way to continue. Because Sina Weibo's user base has opened a micro-credit account, Sina's large size is basically because Sina Weibo's user base has opened a micro-letter account, Sina's large size has basically opened the micro-letter public number, once Tencent with the help of the financial resources of the general offensive, Sina Weibo will constitute a fatal impact.