Sina Weibo’s mobile app exceeded 72.709 million MAUs in September 2014 in China according to EnfoDesk, remaining the most popular Weibo mobile app, followed by that of Tencnet Weibo.

Weibo mobile apps had experienced hard times in September in China. In September, China top 2 Weibo mobile apps did not perform well as Sina Weibo even had a decrease in total time spent and its use frequency growth rate had only a slight increase of 0.8%.

Total number of Weibo (Sina Weibo) mobile app’s active users was 67.53 million in August 2014, down by 10.95%.

Tencent will keep the maintenance of Tencent Weibo without any further development. Southern Metropolis Daily reports, Tencent gave up its microblogging service about half a year ago and just officially announced in July 2014.

Also read: Weibo Users V.S. China Social Media Users

Tencent has removed Weibo business division and moved the team to Tencent News team focusing on video clips sharing product called Weishi (literally means micro-video) according to Southern Metropolis Daily.

Tencent will keep the maintenance of Tencent Weibo without any further development. Southern Metropolis Daily reports, Tencent gave up its microblogging service about half a year ago and just officially announced.

In a press release from Tencent Tech News, it states that Tencent is merging Weibo product operation team with Tencent News team to enhance social information sharing strength.

Tencent launched Weishi in September 2013, positioned as online community for sharing 8 seconds video clips. However, Weishi is losing its battle in short video sharing market to Meipai, which instantly and automatically transforms everyday moments into gorgeous music videos.

Linkedin launched its beta Chinese website on 25th February in 2014, naming its Chinese site “Ling Ying”. President of Linkedin China, Derek Shen led a crew of 6 and showed up on Shen’s Sina Weibo. Derek Shen had posted recruiting notice on Linkedin China enterprise Weibo, as well as his profile page on Linkedin.

Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman had been preparing to enter China market for two years, and did a lot of research. Derek Shen revealed to media during an interview with Sina Tech, that China was quite a unique market which barely any international internet enterprise succeeded. Previously, Google, Ebay and Yahoo all failed in China, while Facebook and Twitter never even got a chance. Amazon seemed to be the only giant internet enterprise survived in China. Linkedin had to take an entire new model in order to win a chance of succeeding in China.

Team Up With Sequoia China and CBC

Linkedin set up a joint venture in China with Sequoia China and CBC (China Broadband Capital). Sequoia invested Linkedin in the early stage, it was not a surprise that Sequoia China continued its cooperation. CBC had influence in local venture capital investment, it invested Evernote China, CSDN and Easy Transport. Evernote China “Yinxiang” became a model for foreign companies to enter China market. Linkedin China board of directors includes Neil Shen from Sequoia China, Edward Tian from CBC, and the other three directors are Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman, Linkedin CEO Jeff Weiner and Derek Shen. 

Venture Company Framework

Derek Shen explained that Linkedin China decided to adopt the framework of a new venture company in China instead of a branch company. Linkedin China also cooperated with Tencent Weibo and Sina Weibo in technology level. With the help of successful venture capitals and local enterprises supports, Linkedin China would be more likely to operate in Chinese way.

Departments of Linkedin China don’t need to report to American headquarter, in stead, they all report to Derek Shen. Derek Shen joined Linkedin on January 1st in 2014, and he used to be vice president of Renren Inc, founder and CEO of nuomi website. Before that, he was the head of business development in Google China. At present, Linkedin China only has 6 staff and they are recruiting now.

Professional Network Takes Time

Derek Shen regarded that professional network took time to grow. Linkedin was launched in 2003, it only had 80,000 users in the next year. By the end of 2005, Linkedin registered users just reached 300,000.

Linkedin has been attractive for Chinese users, before Linkedin entering China, it had accumulated 4 million Chinese users. There are several professional networks in China, such as dajie.com and tianji.com, they only have registered users but less user generated content.

Professional network’s business model is to charge enterprise accounts, therefore their core competence is user data. Linkedin China will face the challenge of user growth and data collection, and this process will not be easy.

Conversations in social media contain valuable information and data for marketers; as there are many tools, free and paid in the market, we will share a quick tip on how you can check brand conversation on China’s major micro-blogging platforms using Baidu search.

It’s actually quite straightforward; in simply three steps:

• Enter this URL into your browser address bar: http://www.baidu.com/s?rtt=2&tn=baiduwb&wd=BRAND
• Replace “BRAND” in the URL with your brand name
• Hit “Enter” to see micro-blogging search results on all major platforms (Sina Weibo, Tencent Weibo, Netease Weibo and Sohu Weibo).

Weibo is the most talked about social media channel in the last one year, followed by social networking sites like Renren. No doubt Sina Weibo should be the most critical channel to consider for most companies.

China has by far the world’s most active social-media population, with 91% of respondents saying they visited a social-media site in the previous six months, compared with 30% in Japan, 67% in the United States, and 70% in South Korea, according to a McKinsey survey results released this April.

This McKinsey survey of 5,700 Internet users in China this April has found that 95% of those living in Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 cities are registered on a social-media site; in addition, the country .

It also pointed out that social media has a greater influence on purchasing decisions for consumers in China. Chinese consumers say they are more likely to consider buying a product if they see it mentioned on a social-media site and more likely to purchase a product or service if a friend or acquaintance recommends it on a social-media site.

The latest financial report revealed that Tencent’s QQ has over 700 million users, more than the total of China Internet users reported by CNNIC.

Tencent launched various social media applications like Qzone, Pengyou, Tencent Weibo and most recent Weixin which all have grown very fast with its huge user base of QQ.

Average time per visit on Sina Weibo dropped by 5.8% last Saturday, according Hitwise. “Comments”, for companies, is one important way of engaging fans and customers.

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Weixin, launched by Tencent on January 21 2011 as a iPhone App, is a free mobile communication tool. You can send voice, video, photo and text messages on Weixin, do group chatting, and find people nearby according to location data.

If you are familiar with Talkbox or Whatsapp, you roughly know how Weixin works; it now works on iOS, Android? Windows Mobile and Symbian devices.

Users can login to Weixin with their QQ ID or sign up with phone number or email address.

Tencent CEO Pony Ma announced on Tencent Weibo that total number of Weixin users has reached 100 million milestone. Tencent is also internally testing a related product called Weiyun, which works in a similar way as iCloud.

Weixin had about 50 million users in 2011 which doubled in less than three months’ time. If this trend continues, it might reach 200 million users by the end of this year. And, the growth of Weixin is very important for Tencent as many of its products find it hard to reach high end users.