1000+ Sina Weibo Enterprise Accounts Are From Overseas, U.S Dominates
So according to Sina Weibo’s recent white paper in Chinese, there are over 130,565 enterprise accounts on Sina Weibo and we know that restaurants dominate a huge part of it. But are the laowai (meaning foreigners) using Sina Weibo for business? You bet. And the U.S is so far dominating this space. The total count of overseas enterprise weibo accounts stands at 1060 since the end of last February [1]. 208 of them are American companies and 178 of them are Japanese companies. The rest of the breakdown can be found below.
最近発表された Sina Weibo の企業アカウントに関する白書（原文は中国語）によると、企業アカウント数は130,565を超えており、その大部分が飲食店であることは前回お伝えしたとおりだ。だが、老外（外国人という意味）もビジネスに Sina Weibo を利用しているのだろうか？もちろん使っている。しかも、今のところアメリカ企業が独占している。昨年2月末以降に外国企業が開設した Weibo 企業アカウント総数は1060で[1]、そのうちアメリカ企業が208、日本企業が178のアカウントを開設している。残りの詳細は下のとおりだ。
Sina Weiboの最近の中国語の報告書によると、130,565以上の企業がアカウントを取得しており、その中でも、レストランが大多数を占めるという。しかし、laowai（老外、外国人という意味）がSina Weiboをビジネスに使っているというのか？その通りなのだ。特に米国の企業が圧倒的に大多数を占める。weiboアカウントを持つ海外企業の総数は、この２月末現在で1060にものぼる。そのうち208が米国企業で、178が日本企業だ。残りの内訳については、下記の通り。
While I do agree that 1060 overseas enterprise Weibo accounts aren’t too many, it’s a good sign that Sina Weibo is able to attract at least some overseas entities – many of them of a very high calibre, in fact. Sina claims that there are 143 Fortune 500 companies are on Weibo. If these Fortune-listed companies are considered early adopters, then many other companies abroad might follow their lead.
Sina Weibo is available in English on iOS but not on the web. I was told at a recent Net Impact conference in Jakarta that Sina Weibo is geo-targeted with its English interface available upon detecting a U.S IP. But our own test doesn’t seem to reflect that. So as far as we can see, Sina Weibo doesn’t have an English language web interface [2]. It is only available in traditional and simplified Chinese.
Nonetheless, the language barrier hasn’t stopped these companies from using Sina Weibo, though. But much of the credit has to be given to the local agencies who are helping multinational companies to leverage Weibo for promotional campaigns, such as the one by Dove which I recently wrote about. The real-name verification regulation also doesn’t seem to affect overseas or local users just yet. It’s getting strange, as my colleague Charlie described here and here. Until now, I’m still able to weibo as usual, without having to reveal any of my personal data.
1. Surprisingly, Taiwan and Hong Kong aren’t in the graph as I believe in this report they are considered part of China. ↩
2. If you’re in the US and you do see an English interface, please let us know.
