Chinese Conundrum

Xinhua news agency reports today that Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, had attracted over 500 million users by the end of 2012, a year-on-year increase of 74 percent, Sina Weibo's active daily users have exceeded 46.2 million, the company said.

The site's revenues totalled 66 million U.S. dollars in 2012, of which 23 percent came from surging income from value-added services. The other 77 percent came from advertising, the revenues of which exceeded 50 million U.S. dollars. Some 75 percent of Sina Weibo's active users log in using mobile devices. Sina also issued financial reports for the last quarter and full fiscal year of 2012 on Wednesday, showing that its net revenues hit 529.3 million U.S. dollars with a year-on-year increase of 10 percent.

Is it just me? But 66 million dollars from 500 million users doesn't really sound like a roaring success. On the other hand, their users made all the content, all they have to do is provide the infrastructure. And what do they care about profits?