China’s Sina Weibo Passes Twitter In Total Users

People just can’t stop using China’s Twitter clone, Weibo. Back in February, it was announced that the service was actually worth more than Twitter, and now numbers show that it actually has more users than Twitter.

According to the latest estimates, Weibo has 340 million active monthly users (a figure that’s up 30% from the previous year). About 154 million of those users visit the site every single day, with an overwhelming 91% doing it via mobile.

Twitter, which is actively blocked in China, had only 328 million active monthly users at last count.

Gaofei Wang, Weibo’s chief executive released a statement saying “Our relentless focus to build the best social media experience in China is reflected in Weibo’s strong performance. Looking ahead, we continue to see strong momentum, as we further optimize Weibo to share, discover and consume information, especially for the mobile, social and video environment.”

According to the China Internet Network Information Centre, there are an estimated 731 million internet users in China, with 90% of them access the internet via a smartphone. And since Sina Weibo is one of the most popular sites in the nation, it makes sense the numbers would be staggering.

Along with being China’s most popular micro-blogging services, it’s also the preferred platform for most Chinese media outlets, including newspapers and TV stations, which all have millions of followers.

Following in Twitter’s footsteps, the site launched their own live streaming app last year, named Yizhibo. Like in the US, the site caught on quickly, with millions of users broadcasting live video.

There are several likely reasons for Weibo’s surpassing Twitter: one being the fact that the site had capabilities like e-commerce that go beyond what Twitter can do in the US, and two being that there are simply more potential users in China.

And even though they’ve been surpassed by their Chinese clone, you have to imagine Twitter is still feeling just fine.