Sina eyes money out of Weibo

Sina Corp, the operator of China's largest Internet portal and the popular microblogging service Weibo, is boosting efforts to make money out of Weibo after unveiling a second quarterly loss.

In a conference call yesterday after releasing its earnings, CEO Charles Chao said the firm expects to have 300,000 enterprise Weibo accounts, nearly double the 160,000 now.

Last month, it unveiled a new version for enterprise Weibo accounts and has signed about 50 advertisers on the microblogging platform.

Advertising income on the social networking platform Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, will contribute to Sina's overall income in the next few quarters.

"Social interest-based advertising on Weibo will start to contribute to our overall income substantially from the second half of this year," Chao said.

In the three months ended March 30, net loss was US$13.7 million versus a year-earlier net profit of US$15 million. Its revenue rose an annual 6 percent to US$106.2 million.