Sina In Trouble With The Censors

One of the troubles with investing in Chinese Internet companies: the government can change the rules or enforce regulations on a whim.

IBD: Sina, Weibo Down On Reports Of China Sanctions

Xinhua did not provide specifics on which of Sina's news offerings concerned government censors, but said the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has accused Sina of spreading "illegal information related to rumors, violence and terrorism," and "advocation of heresies."

In the past, China officials have used "heresy" to refer to content related to banned religious groups, such as the Falun Gong.

Sina "distorted news facts, violated morality and engaged in media hype," according Xinhua, quoting the CAC.

The CAC will "seriously" punish Sina with measures that could include a complete shutdown of its Internet news services, Xinhua said.

I like the next headline:

Xinhua: Sina faces suspension over lack of censorship

Since the beginning of the year, the administration has received 6,038 complaints about Sina, more than any other web portal. It said the reports indicated that "Sina has spread illegal information related to rumors, violence and terrorism, pornography, swindling, advocation of heresies and has distorted news facts, violated morality and engaged in media hype."

Weibo stock fell following the news release on Monday, but shares are up in recent days thanks to the spread of the China stock mania.

Sina Launches 9.8% Investment Product; Manna From Heaven or Trouble Brewing

Invest as little as 1 yuan, for 106 days, and earn 9.8% annualized interest. This was a promo product for Sina's Weibo finance site, 微财富.

The reporter in the piece below sees plenty of possible risk in this high yield product. Simple information such as how the funds are being used is unavailable to investors......

票据宝9.8%高收益天上掉馅饼

Yu E Bao yields will soon fall below 4%, 6% or more bank financing products hard to find, P2P platform collapse-prone, still stuck ...... Aunt grab gold treasure in the balance of the era, and not on the current financial market low-risk low-income threshold for a high product available. Recently, a product called "bills treasure" in front of investors, is said to be one yuan investment, the annual rate of return of up to 9.8%, the only risk is that bank failures. Even the cast of millions from the financial products it is difficult to nearly 10% of the revenue, "notes treasure" is the gospel vario finance it? High yield really no risk? Whether the income is guaranteed?

Hot: high-yield products within two minutes to grab empty

July 4, Sina launched its "micro-wealth" financial platform for a yield of 9.8% notes of financial products, according to the publicity, 14009 treasure bills by the Minsheng Bank(6.02, -0.09, -1.47%) , Dongguan Sales acceptance, yields include "universal access" event 8% and 1.8% in high-yield notes treasure subsidies, 1 yuan investment, the investment period a total of 106 days. Unconditional acceptance by bank guarantee of principal and interest, principal and interest of safety.

Use of this product in a column financing, simply write Shenzhen Ya Chang Ming Trading Co., has not introduced any specific investment channels. Reporters in the online search, did not find this company data and information. July 4, the product offering within two minutes, more than one million financing facility was 227 investors looted. The platform news shows, there are notes of financial products within 18 seconds to raise successful, raising three million financing facility there within 30 seconds.

According to Sina wealth customer service introduction, notes treasure responsible for product design, Sina wealth only provides sales channels.

Mode: mortgage financing with Bank Draft

Notes treasure called bankers' acceptances, commercial bills is a, is the acceptance by the bank to open a deposit account depositors ticket to the bank by the bank agreed to review the application and acceptance, unconditional guarantee to pay a specified date determined amount to the payee or holder.

Bao Online official customer bills introduced bills Bao financial mode is equivalent to the financing needs of enterprises will have its own bank acceptance bills as collateral, and thus financing. Maturity equivalent to the return of investor interest income business loan financing.

Statistics show that China's treasure bills bills network and financial network introduced bill financing, notes financial services platform, under the bill, Shenzhen Bao Financial Services Limited. "Notes treasure" will be locked into high quality corporate financiers emerging domestic industries under. The slogan is "zero risk" on the grounds that the promissory notes are among the line of strong, reputable bank, rigid acceptance, the risk of becoming zero. Only their risk of bank failure risk.

Doubt a　9.8% yields zero risk?


No product description and details of the terms of guaranteed income

Notes treasure: Notes treasure gains of 6% -10% between 21 to 180 days of interest-earning period, one hundred percent safety, zero risk.

Reporter website offering open treasure bills, "notes treasure finance the project first 94" products, which indicate the annualized rate of return of 6.95%, Bank of Zhejiang bank acceptances, investment for a period of one month from the investment amount is 1 yuan. Compared to the current 5% of the bank financing market, the annual yield of about 4% of the balance of treasure indeed attract attention.

But open this financial products, there is only one page bill treasure "This product security" propaganda figure. In addition, no investment details about the product description, there is no word whether the preservation of commitments.

Notes treasure online customer service, said not only protect the treasure bills, and absolutely guaranteed income, but about revenue sources, customer service is only interpreted as interest financing companies, did not explain to invest in specific funds.

In 9.8% of revenue bills treasure products, Sina "micro wealth" Products marked with the words on the page but also the safety of principal and interest. But in a formal product introduction, the reporter found only expressed on bank bill payment of principal, did not find the specific terms of the investment direction and ensure the introduction of income.

Notes Bao explained that the reason why the bill Bao financial gain than other financial products, because the bills treasure belongs to the class of non-standard, unlike other products Monetary Fund, its yield will be higher than the standard product.

"The current paper market discount rate of between 4% and 6%, if the proceeds of the notes can really finance up to 10%, why we do not develop their own financial products, and the profit transfer to the Internet platform?" One State-owned bank financial account manager said that as bills of financial products on behalf of the subject of bankers' acceptances is bank credit. But it does not mean absolutely no risk, which exists cloning vote delayed payment risks. In addition, "these platforms really grasp the true bill, the platform getting the Secured Notes, these investors can research it?"

"Southern Metropolis Daily" quoted the deputy governor of Guangdong introduction of a bank, similar to the "treasure bills," such financial products, from the business principle works, it could theoretically yield of 8% or even higher, but there are risks. "The first is the credit risk of the platform if the platform does not guarantee the credit, then it's the authenticity of the bill, and it promised all sorts of propaganda explosion point, the credibility to be playing a big question mark."

Insiders said that a large market scale of China's finance bill, but the bills are nascent financial products, mode mechanism is not yet mature, coupled with information opacity, there were no clear rules and regulations and wind control system, which may hide many risks.

Doubt 2


10 years of operational security?


"Notes treasure" was established only a month

Notes treasure: 10 years experience in security operations, nearly 0 risk asset protection. Behind treasure bills, bills stood Chinese networks and financial network giant two professional website notes.

Reporters found that the on-line time, "notes treasure" of this product is 16 June 2014. Notes treasure website official website announced the business license states that bills treasure up time for the June 3, 2014, the legal representative for Li Huajun. As for the network and its parent company, China Bills Finance network, also has not reached 10 years of operating time.

Financial information network official website, the site officially launched in November 2008 tests to bankers' acceptances and bills discounted rates trading information as the core product.

Reporters many inquiries found that the current Chinese network has two bills, one is "sponsored China Foreign Exchange Trade System & National Interbank Funding Center" by telephone, said that the website does not know the bills feedback treasure this business. Similarly, another called "China bills network" is a treasure site notes mentioned "professional website giant bill." In this Chinese bills online, the reporter did not find its official information on.

In addition, the financial network and China Telecom network notes record number are "GD ICP 09007025 No." and "GD ICP No. 09007025 -3", whose business address is located in the "Futian District, Shenzhen Tairan eight 33 Yunsong Building. " Notes treasure customer service, said China bills networks and financial network was merged last year, after the merger bills treasure is an important product launch.

Doubt 3


Bank, the country pay treasure to ensure safety?


States need to pay Bao said the investment risk themselves

Notes treasure: treasure bills and bank signed a custody agreement, involving all the notes are kept on the platform at the bank. Guofu Bao Bao fiscal third parties to provide funds for the hosting bills, process monitoring investor capital flows, comprehensive security funds to protect investors.

Reporters yesterday on the text referred to "the bank" repeatedly asked treasure bills online customer service, received no reply. Reporters repeatedly call the customer service phone bills treasure official, but unable to connect.

In a prominent position above the parent company of treasure bills, "China Network notes," the official website, the reporter saw a signature Miss King's "long-term acquisition of small bills ticket prices as low as 800 yuan," the note purchase information.

http://d3.sina.com.cn/pfpghc/7e91a7a82da74f3593a11826a645cab8.jpg
Tianjin, a city firm relevant bank official said, "The current market is very complicated bill discounting, the market many fake tickets, fake tickets need to identify whether it is to get professionals to distinguish carefully distinguished bills as soon as there are false notes appear or 'cloning' notes, will bring great investment risk to investors. "

Bao security bill in the official website of a column, the reporter saw, "notes treasure" Money has a third-party funding hosting platform for the country to pay Bao electronic payment only national certification, third-party payment platform. In the country Fu Baoguan Network reporter saw, the country is relying on Information Technology Co., Fu Baoxin China International Electronic Commerce Center initiated the formation of the government and corporate demand for e-commerce development and background to create an independent state party payment platform.

Guofu treasure customer service staff, said yesterday that Shenzhen Bao Financial Services Limited bill currently does treasure for the country to pay merchants. But when a reporter asked if the treasure bills payment default occurs, the national treasure is liable for breach of the payment, the customer service said that in the national treasure of the merchants pay a personal financial investment behavior, investors need to bear the investment risk, the country pay treasure does not assume responsibility for the joint guarantee treasure bills.

Chinese Chat Money Markets See Interest Rates Surge and Then Plunge; Chinese Chat Programs Have Money Market Funds?

First, an introduction to Chinese online funds. If you didn't know, the online marketplace company Alibaba (the Ebay+Amazon+B2B marketplace), Sina (owner of China's Twitter, Weibo), Baidu and WeChat (part of Tencent, which is China's social networking/chat juggernaut) now offer investment funds for users. Alibaba's grew out of allowing customers to use idle cash in their Alipay accounts, a service that is possible thanks to banking and financial sector reforms. Seeing the success of Alibaba's product, competitors have joined the fray.

How successful is Alibaba's Yu E Bao? It launched in June 2013, a mere eight months ago, and one of its funds is now the 14th largest money market fund in the world, with more than $40 billion in assets. Let that sink in for a moment.

Tianhong's Alibaba mutual fund grows to second largest in China

Tianhong Asset Management, the sole partner of online giant Alibaba in the sale of money market funds on the company's e-commerce platform, is on its way to overtaking China Asset Management to become the mainland's biggest mutual fund manager.

But rivals may already be waiting in the wings.

Tianhong's total assets under management now stand at about 260 billion yuan (HK$330.7 billion), and the upstart could soon surpass the industry's long-time leader, China Asset Management - which oversees about 306.1 billion yuan - thanks to the growing popularity of online shopping.

China Asset Management has been the country's biggest asset management firm since 2007.

"Tianhong's success is not the end of innovation but a beginning, to look at the combination of investors and distributors in China and how such an online distribution model could be applied to more specific products," said Howhow Zhang, head of research at Shanghai-based consultancy firm Z-Ben Advisors.

"The success of such an initiative would depend on what kind of scale you could achieve, since this is a low-fee business model."

Tianhong charges only a 0.3 per cent management fee for its money market fund, a fifth of the 1.5 per cent on average that a mainland equity fund manager charges.

In June, Alipay, Alibaba's e-commerce payment platform, and Tianhong developed a new funds and payment platform called Yu E Bao, which translates as leftover treasure, that allows Alipay customers to convert the idle cash in their accounts into units of a money market fund.

By Friday, the fund had grown in size to 250 billion yuan, making it the largest single mutual fund product in China and the 14th-largest money market fund in the world, according to Tianhong.

......"We have over 100 trillion yuan of cash sitting in the Chinese banks generating almost nothing … it would be inevitable to have intermediate internet services in China trying to tap those massive savings," Zhang said.

To put that in perspective, imagine Google or Paypal offered a money market fund that in less than a year, collected more assets than say, Blackrock or Vanguard. Not going to happen in the U.S. due to having deep and developed financial markets, but the speed at which change is happening should give pause to both bulls and bears on China.

Yu E Bao Deals with the Pressure of Being No. 1

Caixin: How do you allocate funds from Yu E Bao?

Wang: About 80 to 90 percent of the money from Yu E Bao accounts will go to interbank deposits and the rest to safe bonds. Interbank deposits are banks' wholesale businesses with each other. The demands are vibrant.
We allocate investments and match maturities based on data analysis. At different stages a bank's ability to take deposits varies. On one hand, there are banks that can only take, say, 10 billion yuan, but we have 11 billion yuan that needs to be taken care of. That is when we hit the limit of their deposit-taking ability. We can deal with other banks or lower the interest rates we charge. On the other hand, a larger size brings greater negotiating power. We can ask for higher interest rates.

We pay the most attention to liquidity management. So far, we have seen a net increase in Yu E Bao investment. That means we face the pressure of finding investment opportunities for new funds every day.

Do you often get higher interest rates from small banks?

That is generally the case, but large banks may offer higher rates if they are caught short of cash. This is a matter of less concern to Yu E Bao because we limit our investments to only 29 banks that are on our white list. We don't venture outside the list. Most of those banks are state-owned or large joint-stock banks. We think it is not worth the risk dealing with small banks. It is not that we think they would actually default on loans. But we would like to avoid the risk altogether to be prudent.

There are many wealth management services similar to Yu E Bao. What is the strength of Yu E Bao?

First, the core value of our team is prudent wealth management. We have placed risk control in the highest place. Second, Yu E Bao operates on Alipay (the third-party payment service run by e-commerce giant Alibaba Group). It is connected to more than 49 million ordinary people and retail investors. That makes it particularly deep-rooted in society. Third, it brings the function of money market fund investment and payment together. The user experience is good. There are, of course, other funds being developed with a payment function. But we have been at the frontier.

What is the impact of interest rate changes on Yu E Bao? Some people say Yu E Bao's yield will stop rising. What is your view?
The yield of Yu E Bao goes with the cost of capital in the market. In December, there was a rebound in money rates, and the yield of Yu E Bao also increased. When money rates were low, the yield of Yu E Bao was low as well.

We will try to repay investors with moderate returns on investment. If the money market goes weak, it is normal for our yields to fall. But it would not happen all of a sudden. Neither do we promise to deliver any rate of returns. Yields are not our primary concern. We are most concerned with risk control.

The U.S. payment company PayPal introduced a money market fund service in its second year. It shut it down in 2011 as investment shrank. Do you worry that this may be where Yu E Bao is headed?

We have been thinking about this since the first day Yu E Bao was launched. Now that we have grown, whether we will become a second PayPal is more of an issue. The puzzle is not only ours. It is true for the entire money market fund industry.

A big question is: If China has a zero interest rate like the United States, is there still a reason for money market funds to exist? This may not happen very quickly, judging by current conditions. For China to have zero interest rates for a long term, it has to have gone through a very large economic cycle.

Regarding yields, here's the latest 互联网理财收益下滑 余额宝将破6%理财通降1%. In short, these products have seen yields plunge more than 1% in the past few weeks, from 7.9% down to 6.8%. During the mind-month mini-panic over the default of the trust, along with the annual pre-Spring Festival cash crunch, 7-day annualized interest rates surged to between 11% and 13%. If investors are turning cold on trust products, they still need someplace to park their cash and no doubt these funds may be attractive, but the iron law of finance is still in effect. The larger these funds get, the lower the yields will go.

Thus far I've only mentioned Alibaba's product. Both Baidu and Sina have money market funds too. There's also a new entrant into the field from Tencent's WeChat program.

Text, Chat, Profit: Tencent Launches Investing on WeChat

The new service is no doubt aimed at competing with Alibaba’s service, which was introduced last year. It’s also likely a ploy by Tencent to entice users to link their bank and WeChat accounts. The fund, called Licaitong, offers an impressive 7.3940% seven-day annualized yield, besting Yu’e Bao’s rate by almost 1%.

China’s financial sector has long been dominated by state-owned banks, but technology companies have begun to enter their turf by using online platforms to push innovations in the sector.

Though Alibaba was first to push into the sector, others have been hot on its heels. It isn’t known how many customers or how much investment Licaitong attracted on its first day, but a promotion giving away cash prizes to promote the new product attracted enough users to crash the system, according to Chinese magazine Caixin. Tencent’s official QQ customer service said the promotion has been postponed.

Alibaba, Sina cast envious eyes on Tencent's 'Hongbao'

WeChat's red envelope function allows users to bind their bank cards to their WeChat accounts, and then designate sums of money to put in a virtual red envelopes that can be sent electronically to other users. It looks like Tencent didn't actually make any money from the envelopes themselves, but instead benefited by getting 5 million of its users to bind their bank cards to their accounts. That's an extremely important step as Tencent tries to build up lucrative e-commerce business on WeChat. By comparison, the mobile arm of Alibaba's Alipay mobile service, known as Alipay Wallet, currently has about 10 million registered users. According to Tencent, users sent some 20 million red envelopes over the first 2 days of the Lunar New Year.

Comments from Qihoo 360 (NYSE: QIHU) executive Tao Weihua were typical of the generally positive sentiment towards Tencent, praising WeChat for its latest success and also taking a backhand poke at Sina for failing to develop a similar product for its equally popular Weibo service. Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) wireless executive Yue Guofeng similarly noted that the huge success of the Tencent product marked a turning point for Sina Weibo, whose popularity has recently started to drop following its meteoric rise over the last 3 years.

Alibaba certainly understands the threats to its dominance in both e-commerce and electronic payments posed by WeChat. It launched Laiwang, a rival mobile social networking app, last fall and has aggressively promoted the product at every possible opportunity since then.

Financial competition is now driving innovation in social networking. Despite criticism of being copycats and tightly regulated by the state, the Chinese economy is one of the most dynamic in the world in many areas because it is developing old and new markets simultaneously with lots of crossover experimentation. In the short term, these products are a result of the credit bubble: with so much cash sloshing around the Chinese economy, funds can rapidly grow in size, but they are still part of the overall financial system. Though these funds present competition for traditional asset managers, they will be unable to escape a financial crisis, at which point their very existence could come into question. Would investors trust Alibaba over their local bank? If I was a bank, I would start working on my brand image.

For more on Weixin/WeChat see:

5 ways China’s WeChat is more innovative than you think

A Popular Chinese Social Networking App Blazes Its Own Path

Messaging Battle Royale: Sina vs Tencent vs China Unicom vs China Mobile

Sina's Weibo service and Alibaba have linked up. Now China Unicom has linked up with Tencent's WeChat software.
Wechat, Weibo vs. SMS

"The telecommunications companies may try to invent a competitive instant messaging service of their own. The other way is to cooperate with OTT service providers. But the disadvantage in the first solution lies in the fact that the telecom companies are unfamiliar with making Internet-related products; so their products might not give the users the same comfortable experiences when it's put to use. China Unicom has opted for the second solution by seeking cooperation with WeChat."

In fact, the popular messaging App -- WeChat is not just conquering user but turning rivals into partners. China Unicom in Guangdong province and WeChat's owner Tencent are introducing the first joint SIM card. Users can enjoy both WeChat's new services and discounts from China Unicom.

From August 8: China Unicom’s WeChat Subscription Plan Hits China Today

Today marks the first step in the tentative and possibly-doomed alliance between Chinese telecoms and WeChat, the OTT chat app that’s destroying their text messaging revenues. As of right now — the minute this post is published — China Unicom users nationwide* can purchase a special WeChat SIM card and access the app even if they don’t have a regular 3G subscription through the telco.

The card doesn’t just allow use of the wireless web for chatting, though, it also will allow users to use other data-heavy aspects of the app, including playing games, sending stickers, and making payments online. Users who purchase it can choose from a variety of plans, which run between 30 and 60 RMB ($5-$10) per month although other fees apply, including and up-front price for the card itself.

WeChat is Tencent's strong play. Weibo is Sina's. Weibo has added chat service and WeChat integrates with Tencent's other programs such as QQ and Tencent Weibo. But for now, both programs have a dominant niche. The main outlier so far is China Mobile.

Where's the profit? Facebook and Sina searching for an answer

I remember when many people asked how Yahoo! and other early web companies could make money. Their content was free and their earnings in the late 1990s were very small. However, earnings did come in and for people who bought (very) early or after the crash, they even bought at a decent price. Today, some web companies are relatively cheap, such as in the social gaming sector, while others such as Facebook are expensive. I say this because some of the social gaming stocks that trade overseas have very low P/Es (and pay dividends!) and a stock such as Zynga (ZNGA) is trading at 20 times 2013 earnings. There's obviously a lot of risk involved, but I don't believe analysts are able to correctly value these companies, nor are stock market investors. These firms experience extremely rapid growth and I invest as if they were options—they will have a binary outcome, either they make it or they don't. If they make it, they will be earnings estimates for years on end, while if they fail, at best they will be sold for their assets.

Of course, while there are very interesting investments just below the radar screen, everyone is focused on Facebook and Twitter because they're huge and Facebook itself is the ecosystem for a large amount of social gaming. There are plenty of articles about Facebook, but I wanted to highlight a negative one and a positive one. The first one, Failbook’s Epic Fail: Does Zuckerberg Want Users To Pay?, comments on an article in the BBC, Facebook tests 'pay to promote post' tool. The author has a low-ball valuation for Facebook and sees this revenue attempt as negative. I think web companies often experiment and as long as it's not a major strategy for a company, they can survive many failures. However, I think it does signal that Facebook is looking for revenue, especially now that they're a public company. Will the shift in psychology harm the firm?

The second article takes a more positive view. Facebook's Value: What's the Price of a Billion People Watching Each Other? Facebook is a huge force on the Internet and has pursued what I would call a Google-like strategy: become the Internet. Facebook wants to remain the social networking platform. Whether that eventually translates into enough profit to justify its valuation is another story.

Twitter isn't public, but Sina's Weibo faces similar challenges to profitability. Sina Weibo's Fretful Hunt for Profit Platform

Despite an enormous user base of some 300 million microbloggers across China, Sina Weibo is losing money. And its executives are fretting.

Sina is important to watch because Chinese users less worried about privacy. If there's a way to profit, they have more room to maneuver without upsetting users.

Social network advertising around the world is designed to target consumers more accurately than portals and search engines. Targeted social advertising requires data mining and user-behavior analyses. The world's largest network Facebook reported more than US$ 3 billion in ad revenues last year and could rake in US$ 5 billion in 2012.

Sina Weibo's long-range plan calls for building a "social mapping plus interest mapping" platform. The idea is to offer users a two-way communications system like Facebook or a hybrid "Twitter-Facebook" platform.

It's unclear whether this goal can be reached – or make money.

The authors of a recent Sina financial report admitted, "We have no way of ensuring that the profit models employed by other microblogging services and social networking service providers are suitable to weibo."

......On the plus side, mobile microblogging already generates more traffic than the standard Internet, and weibos are the most active mobile applications in China, putting Sina Weibo in a good position for future growth in mobile markets.

As an investor, valuation is key. Facebook doesn't simply have to be profitable, it needs to earn enough to justify its $50 billion valuation. The real story of the Facebook IPO is that the IPO price is far closer to the company's value than the IPOs of the 1990s and at this point, investors would be wise to buy the small, profitable, and just as rapidly growing social network/social gaming firms.

Authoritarianism in China: Sina Weibo has one month left

Deadline Set for Real Name Microblogs

Chinese officials have set a firm deadline for real name registration on microblogs based in Beijing, saying users must verify their IDs by March 16.
The deadline finalizes a policy that has drawn both criticism and praise across China, with some concerned over the threat it presents to free speech and information safety, and others saying it will restrict rumors and fraud.

5 million out of 320 million have registered. I'm sure it will go down to the wire, and then we'll see how serious they are about the policy.

The latest Weibo (a division of SINA) generated controversy was caused when a user described his encounter with crooked shopkeepers in Sanya, Hainan. In this case, a restaurant (which has a deal with cab drivers) was charging US$1000 for meals and if you didn't want to pay, "security" came to change your mind. The user said he also witnessed another customer inquire about the price of a fish, only to see the owner immediately kill it and tell him it cost more than US$100 per pound. The restaurant had a comical defense when reporters showed up: we keep records of all our bills, none are than high, and we don't have any fish that large. In any event, the Sanya government was very angry as more people started telling their stories of being ripped off. They said whoever is saying these things on Weibo, should stand up and identify themselves. This was criticized by netizens as an attempt to silence whistle blowers. One month from now, the Sanya government will get its wish.

China mircoblog wars

In China, competing Twitter-like services are known as 微薄 (wéibó), which literally translates as micro blog. A Twitter knockoff named Fanfou (饭否) was shut down during the Xinjiang riots last year and to the best of my knowledge, it lost its first-mover advantage. Sina (SINA) appears to have taken the lead, with 56% of the microblog market. It's service was running off of its Sina.com domain, but this week it launched Weibo.com to give the service its own identity.

Tencent (0700.HK) has also stepped into the market though, and it is a heavy hitter. It's QQ messaging service is a monster, with over 600 million registered users and concurrent users peaking at over 100 million. It also offers music, streaming TV and movies, games and more through the platform. It also has social networking services and has now added microblogs. Tencent basically offers everything you can imagine and more, although it seems many of the components are not most popular.

Tencent isn't the only competitor. NetEase (NTES), Sohu (SOHU) and Baidu (BIDU) are among those looking to take market share. One battle tactic is the capture of celebrity microblogs, who attract millions of followers.
China’s Microblogging Celebs Blow Past Western Stars
Rumor: Baidu to Overhaul Microblog Platform, Poach Celebrities

Here is an in-depth Chinese article covering the topic: 微博之战——争夺中国人的“意见”与“关系”