Weibo to introduce e-commerce platform
July 10, 2013 Leave a comment
Weibo to introduce e-commerce platform
Staff Reporter
2013-07-10
After the launch of an online shopping service in cooperation with Alibaba’s Taobao — one of China’s leading e-commerce websites — Sina Weibo, the country’s most popular microblogging service, has enabled online shoppers to check the status of their parcels, representing another major step towards its commercialization, reports the Beijing-based China Entrepreneur magazine. Online shoppers can now use Weibo to check the payment and shipment status for orders placed within a three month period. They can also use dedicated mobile phones in partnership with Weibo to check and receive information on orders, thereby closely monitoring the latest handling status of their items, the report said.On July 4, Weibo notified its users of the plan to help online stores on Taobao and Tmall push their products. The microblogging service can transmit information of online stores to 100,000 users at 1,000 yuan (US$160), with the targets being selected from its enormous base of 500 million registered users, in terms of occupation, gender and interests.
Weibo had previously rolled out a linkage-type advertisement service, satisfying the aspiration of small and medium e-commerce firms for social marketing via precise data analysis and data mining capabilities. The fees were then calculated according to either the amount of views or the amount of responses.
Analysts note that Alibaba, parent firm of Taobao and Tmall, intends to make Weibo its largest customer. The microblogging site is planning to launch “Taobao on Weibo,” which is currently under development and is scheduled to commence in late July. In the future, users can directly place shopping orders on Weibo.
According to the agreement between Alibaba and Weibo, the cooperation can bring Weibo US$380 million in income through marketing and e-commerce in the next three years, or US$120 million a year, compared with its reported US$66 million revenue last year, China Entrepreneur said.
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