News: Twitter to get Chinese rival, Weibo

. Wednesday 8 June 2011

Reuters | Jun 6, 2011, 08.29pm IST

BANGALORE: China's Sina Corp is readying an English version of its microblogging platform, Weibo, and plans to launch it in the US in two-three months as a rival to Twitter, Chinese tech blog Techweb said, citing informed sources.

Shares of Sina were up about 4 per cent in high-volume trading.

Sina, which has seen its stock soar on investor hopes that Weibo will be monetized sooner rather than later, reported in May, a 39 per cent decline in quarterly net profit after it invested heavily in the platform.

Sina hopes to have more than 200 million Weibo users by the end of the year, up from 140 million currently.

The planned launch would mean direct competition with popular US microblogging service Twitter, the blog said.

Sina's shares were trading at $115.49, following the news on Monday, on Nasdaq.

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