Weibo: Sina Looking at Big Bucks in Micro Packages

It’s a relatively slow news day, so I thought I’d start off with another “seeing is believing” story, this one on Sina’s (Nasdaq: SINA) wildly popular microblogging Weibo service. Sure, we’ve all heard about how Weibo is becoming the Twitter of China, but yesterday I got to see the real thing in action and it was quite impressive. Within literally 2 or 3 minutes of an acquaintance posting an item on his Weibo site about my blog, the “news” had been rebroadcast by at least 3 or 4 of his followers, and a woman sitting behind us in the coffee shop where we talking, whom neither of us knew, came over and said hello. Granted, none of this resulted in a significant increase in traffic to my blog, but that’s really beside the point. Clearly lots of people with not enough to do are spending time on this thing, which a savvy Sina should easily be able to monetize and use to generate handsome revenues and profits. The way this thing is growing, with a current user base of over 100 million, I see spin-off and IPO not far down the line, and another feather in Sina’s cap as it tries to become a diversified Web company.

VERDICT: Weibo looks really sharp, and is likely to IPO in the next couple of years bringing handsome returns for its parent and founder, Sina.