By Herman Lai, posted Jan 9, 2013 at 12:44 PM, 404 views,

Chinese Social Media Giant Sina Weibo Gearing Up An English Version For Oversea Users

Sina Weibo is China’s largest social media platform with over 400-million registered users, and sometimes being referred as “China’s Twitter”. It’s good to hear that Sina Weibo is planning to reach out international audiences by offering an English-language interface. There’re already numerous foreigners notice the service, famous figures like Bill Gates, Sean Maloney (Vice president of Intel), Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Emma Watson, and mores..

Having an English interface will certainly help to draw more users, especially when Facebook and Twitter are blocked in China. Its biggest rival Tencent Weibo also added English interface back in 2011, but that did not help much to withstand competition from Sina Weibo. Furthermore, Sina is also focusing on monetizing its service by testing various e-commerce strategies and payment methods on the service for profit. Overall, what will an English interface mean for Sina Weibo? Will it help to get the platform more globalized? Will it help foreign e-commerce company like PayPal to get into the Chinese market? This will certainly open a lot of questions and possibilities in the bilateral U.S.-China relationship.

More foreigners to learn Chinese, or more Chinese to learn English?

Source: TechinAsia, TNW