China's 'Twitter' Has Big Dreams

Charles Chao has built Sina Corp. into a Chinese Twitter. Now he wants it to be a Chinese Facebook, too.

Chao, Sina's chief executive, has led the company's transformation from an online portal focused on news and blogging to China's most talked-about social-media company. Since he launched Sina Weibo -- which lets users send short, Twitter-like messages to their followers—less than two years ago, the service's popularity has exploded, with more than 140 million users as of March, by Sina's count. RedTech Advisors LLC, of Shanghai, estimates that Sina Weibo has 57% of China's microblog users and 87% of its microblog activity. Sina CEO Charles Chao, shown in April, has led the company's transformation from an online portal focused on news and blogging to China's most talked-about social-media company. But in the ultracompetitive world of China's Internet industry, such leads are hard to keep, and Sina faces pressure from rivals, who are pouring resources into the social-networking sector. Chief among them is Tencent Holdings Ltd., an industry giant with a big pile of cash that has been aggressively promoting its own microblogging site.