China’s popular Twitter-like site Weibo may have taken a step closer to an IPO yesterday by unmooring itself from Sina.com. No longer will users have to click or type their way to t.sina.com.cn. Instead, they can type in Weibo.com to access the microblogging site instantly, according to Penn Olson.
Back in February, I wrote a post titled Will we ever see a SINA Weibo IPO? I speculated then that SINA Corporation (NASDAQ:SINA) would be silly to spin off its fastest-growing business. I may have jumped the gun.
All systems seem to be pointing to a Weibo IPO sooner rather than later. First, there was a thinly-sourced report in March from China’s 21st Century Business Herald that claimed Sina was in talks with several investment banks as it mulled a Weibo IPO.
Now, there’s a move to separate the microblogging site from Sina.com by giving it its own domain. Perhaps it’s just a matter of time before we get our hands on an official S-1 filing.
For now, users will be able to use t.sina.com.cn AND weibo.com. Eventually the two sites will be merged, and traffic going to t.sina.com.cn will get re-directed to Weibo.com. The re-branding should help raise public consciousness for Weibo in China and abroad.
“We have successfully built Sina microblog Weibo into the largest and most influential social media platform in China, with user base increasing by more than 25 times in 2010,” Sina’s CEO Charles Chao said after the company’s Q4 earnings report last month.
The total number of Weibo users doubled to 100 million in the four months leading up to the report, and Sina’s in the process of deploying an advertising and a virtual goods marketplace on Weibo. While the microblogging service is yet to generate any revenue, analysts still believe Weibo could be valued at $3 billion or more.
And judging by the success of several recent tech IPOs out of China (including YOKU, DANG and QIHU), a Weibo IPO has the potential to turn into a public spectacle – especially if the site could beat Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook onto stock exchanges.
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Tags: DANG, Facebook, Facebook IPO, QIHU, SINA, Sina Weibo, social networking stocks, YOKU
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