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January 7, 2014 04:18 pm GMT
Sina Weibo, the microblogging platform that has been called China’s Twitter, has partnered up with Alipay to launch a new payment platform called Weibo Payment. Users of Sina Weibo’s iOS app can now access Weibo Payment, which is an important part of the strategic partnership between Sina and Alibaba, two of China’s top Internet companies. In addition to Weibo Payment, Sina Weibo has also added new features that not only facilitate offline payments, but also turn the microblogging service into a CRM platform that allows merchants to manage marketing campaigns and accept payments. Sina Weibo currently has about 400,000 business accounts. In a press conference today covered by TechNode (TechCrunch’s partner site in China), Fan Zhiming, the head of Alifinance in China, said that Weibo Payment was launched to compete directly with WeChat‘s payment services. Though Sina Weibo has played a highly influential role in public discourse within China (and other Chinese-speaking countries), it faces strong competition from WeChat, the messaging app created by competitor Tencent. Sina Weibo has about 50 million daily active users, compared to WeChat’s 195 million active users per month.Sina Weibo’s growth has also slowed down since the end of 2012 and it has faced problems monetizing the service, which, as TechCrunch’s Kim-mai Cutler noted, recalls the criticism Twitter took several years ago for taking a long time to launch revenue-makers such as promoted tweets and in-stream ads. Alibaba’s CTO told us last year that Sina Weibo will monetize through e-commerce, not advertising revenue, after Alibaba took a stake worth $586 million in the service. Partnering with Alibaba, which dominates China’s rapidly growing e-commerce market, also adds a layer of convenience to Sina Weibo which might encourage existing users to stay and entice people to create new accounts. In turn, the deal benefits Alibaba because the company has not been as successful with its social networking efforts as e-commerce, and it is important for them to ramp up those services as it heads toward its highly anticipated IPO. So far, the partnership shows promise. The companies said today that 48% of active daily Sina Weibo users have already integrated their Alibaba accounts so they can share items from Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms, including online marketplaces Taobao and Tmall. Weibo Payment is supposed to make online and offline payments, as well as social shopping, easier for Sina Weibo users. When a user shares an item from one of
Original Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/qFAJhxMuxVQ/
Chinese Internet Giants Alibaba and Sina Weibo Partner Up To Launch Weibo Payment
Sina Weibo, the microblogging platform that has been called China’s Twitter, has partnered up with Alipay to launch a new payment platform called Weibo Payment. Users of Sina Weibo’s iOS app can now access Weibo Payment, which is an important part of the strategic partnership between Sina and Alibaba, two of China’s top Internet companies. In addition to Weibo Payment, Sina Weibo has also added new features that not only facilitate offline payments, but also turn the microblogging service into a CRM platform that allows merchants to manage marketing campaigns and accept payments. Sina Weibo currently has about 400,000 business accounts. In a press conference today covered by TechNode (TechCrunch’s partner site in China), Fan Zhiming, the head of Alifinance in China, said that Weibo Payment was launched to compete directly with WeChat‘s payment services. Though Sina Weibo has played a highly influential role in public discourse within China (and other Chinese-speaking countries), it faces strong competition from WeChat, the messaging app created by competitor Tencent. Sina Weibo has about 50 million daily active users, compared to WeChat’s 195 million active users per month.Sina Weibo’s growth has also slowed down since the end of 2012 and it has faced problems monetizing the service, which, as TechCrunch’s Kim-mai Cutler noted, recalls the criticism Twitter took several years ago for taking a long time to launch revenue-makers such as promoted tweets and in-stream ads. Alibaba’s CTO told us last year that Sina Weibo will monetize through e-commerce, not advertising revenue, after Alibaba took a stake worth $586 million in the service. Partnering with Alibaba, which dominates China’s rapidly growing e-commerce market, also adds a layer of convenience to Sina Weibo which might encourage existing users to stay and entice people to create new accounts. In turn, the deal benefits Alibaba because the company has not been as successful with its social networking efforts as e-commerce, and it is important for them to ramp up those services as it heads toward its highly anticipated IPO. So far, the partnership shows promise. The companies said today that 48% of active daily Sina Weibo users have already integrated their Alibaba accounts so they can share items from Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms, including online marketplaces Taobao and Tmall. Weibo Payment is supposed to make online and offline payments, as well as social shopping, easier for Sina Weibo users. When a user shares an item from one ofOriginal Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/qFAJhxMuxVQ/
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