Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblogging service like Twitter, now has over 200 million users, owner Sina.com has said.
Sina is run by Sina Corporation which was founded in 1999 in mainland China. The company’s global financial headquarters have been based in Shanghai since 2001.
"Launched less than two years ago, Weibo.com has become an online phenomenon with registered accounts recently surpassing 200 million," Sina.com chief executive Charles Chao said in the company’s second-quarter earnings statement.
Sina launched Weibo about two years ago as a rival to microblogging site Twitter, which is blocked in China. Last month, Weibo was said to have over 140 million users. Twitter now has over 300 million users worldwide.
China boasts of the world’s most populous Internet market, with over 450 million online users.
Sina has also said that it is planning to launch an English version of Weibo in future.
Earlier this year, company spokesman Mao Taotao had said that the new service in English will similar to its Chinese-language Weibo microblog.
"We’re now developing an English-language microblog service, but there is no timetable to launch it," Mao had said.
"The service is aimed at overseas users, but we don’t target users from a particular country."
