China’s Weibo overtakes Twitter for user numbers

China’s Weibo now has up to 340 million active users each month, according to the firm’s latest earnings report, which pushes it past Twitter for the first time ever.

According to the Chinese company’s first quarter results, it has 340 million active monthly users, 30% up on the previous year.

About 154 million people use the site daily, 91% of whom access it via mobile.

By comparison, Twitter, which is blocked in China, has around 328 million active monthly users.
“Our relentless focus to build the best social media experience in China is reflected in Weibo’s strong performance,” Gaofei Wang, Weibo chief executive, said in a statement. “Looking ahead, we continue to see strong momentum, as we further optimise Weibo to share, discover and consume information, especially for the mobile, social and video environment.”

China has an estimated 731 million web users, more than 90% of whom can access the internet via a smartphone, according to the China Internet Network Information Centre.
Sina Weibo is the most popular of China’s micro-blogging services, and it is the preferred platform for most mainland Chinese newspapers and TV stations, which have millions of followers.
Last year, seeing how popular live streaming video was becoming, Sina Weibo launched its own live streaming app, Yizhibo, nicknamed “Yi”.

The number of people actively using Twitter has continued to rise by about 6% each month, but in April it revealed that its revenue from advertising had fallen by almost 8% in the space of a year.

Chief executive Jack Dorsey said the company “continued to face revenue headwinds”, but that user numbers had increased in part because of measures to reduce abusive content.