新浪CEO谈论中国社交媒体:微博

China is home to nearly half a billion internet users. And Sina's Weibo or microblog is the country's biggest social media site often compared to both Twitter and Facebook.

Whichever way netizens see it, the company's growth has been staggering, growing to more than 140 million users in less than two years. The man at the helm is Charles Chao, the former TV reporter who holds degree from the University of Oklahoma.

You are the number one microblog in China, so why do Chinese netizens turn to you?

First of all, among the big players we started early. I mean, we launched the product about almost two years ago, in August 2009. And I think we did a very good execution in terms of attracting, you know, the celebrities and grassroots users and having been able to grow users very rapidly. Since then, there is a competition and people began to launch this kind of product by big companies. But I think we've already established the leading position there, and we have been very focused in terms of developing new products and actually to introduce new features to the user base.

Now there are close to 500 million internet users in China. So of them, how many use your service Weibo?

Well, I think, as of last reporting day we published, was at the end of April. Our number, registered users number was about 140 million. And that number is keeping going very fast.

So in the world's largest internet market, one of five individuals online here in China uses Weibo.

You can say so, at least “register for” Weibo.

Is Sina Weibo making money?

No, actually, I mean, if we want to make money, probably found advertisings very easy. But at the current stage, I think, we are still in a period that we want to accumulate more users. We are much more focused on the product improvement, launching new product, attracting more users and also launching different marketing campaigns to attract more users.

But you are already huge, why not monetize your audience now?

If you look back in the internet platform, whether it's Google or Yahoo or Facebook right now, I mean, it takes years for them to build user platform first, then they talk about monetization. And so I think we have been there only for like 24 months, less than 24 months right now. So I think our priority right now is more focused on product. And try to make a platform bigger.

Now as the head of Sina Weibo, do you consider yourself a tastemaker for China, a culture arbiter of what's cool, what's not cool?

Well, I think it's..., now we provide platform for that, but we are not the one who determines what is cool, what is not cool, what is trendy, what is not trendy. Our users will decide.