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Weibo: The Shape of Things to Come?

Posted June 25, 2017

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My favorite newspaper is the FT

Particularly the Weekend FT.

This morning, I came across a fascinating tid bit of information on page 16.

Buried in a small column entitled Weibo: Killing The Video Star.

Weibo (which means Micro blogging in Chinese) is a very popular website in China, with more than 500 million users.

Friday, Weibo's shares, which trade on the NYSE, dropped 6% after the Chinese government banned Weibo from showing videos that don't have the 'appropriate license'. (Were the US to do this to Facebook or Youtube, it would pretty much evsicerate those companies).

"All social media groups have put an increasing emphasis on video", writes the FT.

A fifth of Weibo's $170m in revenue in the first quarter of 2017 was from video alone.

The Chinese (and there are 1.4 billion of them), devote a quarter of their time on mobile to watching videos. Only Instant Messages capture more time.

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