About Weibo

Weibo Corporation (Weibo) operates as a social media platform for people to create, distribute and discover content. The company is a subsidiary of SINA Corporation (SINA). Weibo Corporation holds 100% of the equity of Weibo Hong Kong Limited, or Weibo HK, a company incorporated in Hong Kong, and 100% of the equity of WB Online Investment Limited, or WB Online, a company incorporated in the Cayman Islands. Weibo HK is the company’s intermediary holding company in Hong Kong. WB Online mainly engages in investing activities. Weibo HK holds 100% of the equity of Weibo Internet Technology (China) Co., Ltd (Weibo Technology) and 100% of the equity of Hangzhou Weishichangmeng Advertising Co., Ltd., or Weishichangmeng. Both Weibo Technology and Weishichangmeng are the company’s wholly owned subsidiaries in China. Weibo Technology’s principal business activities are the provision of technical and consulting services. Weishichangmeng’s principal business activities are the provision of advertising and marketing services. The variable interest entities (VIEs) hold certain assets, including an Internet Content Provision License held by Weimeng, and other permits that are necessary for operating the company’s business in China. Beijing Weimeng Chuangke Investment Management Co., Ltd. (Weimeng Chuangke) primarily engages in strategic investments in companies whose businesses are complementary to the company’s, which generally include high-tech companies operating in different internet-related businesses. Weibo is a leading social media platform in the People’s Republic of China (PRC or China) for people to create, discover and distribute content. By providing a simple and inspirational way for people and organizations in China and the global Chinese communities to publicly express themselves in real time, interact with others on a platform with vast scale and stay connected with the world, Weibo has had a profound social impact in China. Weibo has transformed the way people express themselves and interact with others in the public internet space. Any user can create and post a feed and attach multimedia or long-form content. User relationships on Weibo may be asymmetric, and any user can follow any other user and add comments to a feed while reposting. This simple, asymmetric, and distributed nature of Weibo allows an original feed to become a live viral conversation stream. Weibo serves a wide range of users, including ordinary people, celebrities, key opinion leaders (KOLs), and other public figures or influencers, as well as media outlets, businesses, government agencies, charities, and other organizations, making it a microcosm of Chinese society. As a leading social media, Weibo allows people in China and the global Chinese communities to be heard publicly and exposed to the rich ideas, cultures, and experiences in a broader world. Weibo offers comprehensive content formats as a social media platform. Weibo users can create, discover, consume and share various formats of content, including text, photo, video, live streaming, and audio on Weibo platform. By aggregating various media formats, Weibo platform allows content creators to have more diverse choices to create content in their most desirable ways, so that more enriched content could be generated and distributed across the platform. Weibo is also well positioned to capture the market trends in media formats transformation. To capitalize on the trend of video, Weibo has launched a series of innovative initiatives to improve its video product offerings and to empower and attract more video content creators to its platform. To support the diverse content offerings, Weibo also has comprehensive coverage of content categories and content creators. The diversified content offerings on Weibo platform cater to the evolving and broad interests of Weibo users and cultivate a more vibrant ecosystem on Weibo platform. Products and Services The company’s product categories include those for users, advertising and marketing customers and platform partners. Products for Users The company’s product development approach is centered on building simple and useful tools to enable its users to access Weibo to discover, create, and distribute content and interact with others on its platform in real time. The company employs a ‘mobile first’ philosophy and have designed its platform around the capabilities of mobile devices. The company introduced the first generation of the Weibo mobile app in the first quarter of 2010. The company’s app is compatible with all major mobile operating systems, including Android, iOS and others, and is accessible through mobile apps, mobile websites, computer apps and computer websites. Users can watch videos, read articles, discover hot information feeds and interest-based topics after installing the Weibo app or when visiting Weibo websites. Users registered with a Weibo account can set up their account information, post feeds, upload short videos and post articles. Users can also interact among themselves on the company’s platform by following, liking, reposting, adding comments, sending private messages, and participating in topic discussions and group chats. Starting from a social media platform primarily focusing on text and photo, Weibo has been rolling out new formats, such as video and live streaming, to meet users’ evolving demands. With its continuous efforts in capitalizing on new content formats, Weibo offers a wide array of content format, content categories and content creators among social platforms in China. Weibo plans to attract more users by further diversifying and enhancing its content offerings, such as promoting the video account program and accelerating the videolization for Weibo’s content creators. Weibo serves a wide range of users, including ordinary people, celebrities, KOLs, and other public figures or influencers, as well as media outlets, businesses, government agencies, charities, and other organizations. Weibo has collaborated with industry leading multi-channel networks (MCNs) to provide high-quality content that spans across various content verticals. Discovery: The company offers the following products to help users discover content on its platform: Information Feed: The company organizes and presents users with information feed in different forms. Among all the company’s offerings, the two most important and most frequently browsed feeds are relationship-based information feed (follow model) and interest-based information feed, both of which reside on users’ home page. Each user’s relationship-based information feed displays a flow of feeds posted by that user and other users who he or she has opted to follow. Since Weibo allows users to follow other users without establishing a reciprocal relationship, users are able to personalize who they follow based on their interests. In other words, users can as easily follow celebrities and strangers as they follow friends and acquaintances. To improve user experience, the relationship-based information feed has evolved from a chronological timeline to one with multiple dimensions, including content relevancy, content quality, user interest, user engagement, user relationships, etc. Users can also customize their information feed by classifying followed accounts into different groups, e.g. friends, co-workers, celebrities, finance, sports and view feeds from each group separately. Interest-based information feeds are timelines of feeds recommended by Weibo based on different interest-based themes. The hot information feed is an example of an interested-based information feed that the company presents on users’ homepages to recommend feeds on recent popular topics, breaking news and feeds generated through user’s individual interest. The company also organizes other interest-based information feeds on various themes for users to further explore the topics in which they are interested. For example, the video information feed, which is a timeline of recommended videos that appears after a user finishes watching a short video; and the profile information feed, which can be found on a user’s individual page and shows all of the feeds shared by that user. Search: The company’s search function allows users to search its large content pool for users, feeds, videos, articles, pictures, etc. based on keywords (hashtag), topics or recent popular trending. Through the company’s powerful search function, users can efficiently acquire the most relevant information they seek in real time. Discovery Zone: The discovery zone is the interface aggregating Search, Channels, Trends and information feeds for users to conveniently access a variety of content and services based on the user’s location and topical interests, such as games, movie reviews, ticket purchasing, online music streaming, online shopping and live streaming. Users can find content related to their interests and interact with others of the same interests in the discovery zone. Channels: Channels gather users based on particular interests or locations and encourage user engagement through interaction within each channel. Users can visit these Channels to find rich content on topics of interest and interact with other users of similar interest. For example, users can watch live streaming content and movie trailers from the respective Channels and write reviews in the discussion zone. With Weibo’s location-based services, users can locate popular points of interest, find information about them, such as show times for movie theaters and menus for restaurants, access coupons, post comments, and see reviews shared by other users. Trends: Trends are lists of hot topics on Weibo. A user can start a topic discussion by adding hashtags (#) around a word or phrase in a feed. The key word or phrase then becomes searchable with a single click. Top trends are listed in the discovery zone. Users may view feeds under each trending topic and participate in the discussion. Weibo hot search is the company’s hot topic ranking chart which is calculated based on data mining of real-time search data on the Weibo platform, presenting to users the most breaking, real-time and trendy content. It is the go-to platform for hot trend discovery, consumption and discussion. Self-Expression: The company offers the following products to enable its users to express themselves on its platform: Post: Weibo enables users to express and share their ideas, opinions and stories in the form of text and multimedia content. A post is usually composed of text, and can include rich, descriptive and vivid content, such as photos, short videos, live streaming and long-form articles. Individual Page: Each individual user has an Individual Page to express and share ideas, opinions and stories in the form of text and multimedia content. Basic information about a user, including username, introduction, education, location, liked feeds, accounts followed, follower accounts and Weibo account number, is also available on the user’s Page. Individual users with verified authentic identity information will have an orange ‘V’ mark on their profile picture. Weibo membership, which can be purchased mainly through monthly, quarterly, or annual subscriptions, offers certain additional services and functions not available to free users, such as following more users, more personalization of their Pages, additional options to manage information feeds and followers and access to premium games. Business and other organizations with verified identities can apply for enterprise accounts, create an Enterprise Page and will have a blue ‘V’ mark on their profile picture. The company enables organizations to customize their Pages and to increase brand awareness, interact with followers, and perform marketing events, promotion activities, and advertisement campaigns on Weibo. The company also enables businesses and other organizations to increase their business efficiency by providing various tools. For example, an e-commerce merchant can facilitate purchase activities through Weibo or offer ‘red envelop’, and drawings to build a follower base. Videos: Users can continuously create, share and discover full-screen vertical and horizontal short videos. Videos allow users to more easily create and consume content, and have gained popularity quickly among Weibo users, especially younger generation. In addition, user can use tools, such as stickers, filters and music to express their personality. Top Articles: Top Articles satisfies users’ need for content creation and presentation. Users can create beautifully presented content through Top Articles, and then publish their content through Weibo, which will display the content through information feed. Weibo Q&A: Weibo Q&A is the company’s question-and-answer platform where users can engage in free Q&A, as well as paid Q&A. The creation and interaction of user-generated content strengthens user engagement on Weibo. Weibo Live Streaming: Weibo Live Streaming includes showcase live streaming and media live streaming that satisfies the broadcasting demand of both individual users and business or organization users. Social: The company offers the following mechanisms to promote social interaction between users on its platform: Follow: Users can establish relationships with other users by electing to follow them. Feeds that are posted or reposted by a user will automatically appear in the information feed of the user’s followers. Relationships may be asymmetrical. The user being followed does not need to approve the follower’s decision to follow them, although a user can choose to limit access to certain feeds or to blacklist a certain follower. Repost, Comment, Favorite, Like: By clicking on the Repost button, users can repost feeds from other users. When a feed is reposted, the original author is able to virally reach and influence users beyond that author’s own circle of followers, leveraging the network of the followers of the author’s followers, sometimes many degrees away. Users can add their own comments when they repost and share their view on the original feed with their followers. Users can also leave comments on a feed by clicking on the Comment button. If they like a feed, they can click on the Like button to express their support for the feed. At the bottom of each feed, users can see how many people have Reposted, Commented on or Liked the feed. Users can also save feeds into their favorites by clicking on the Favorite button. Topic Discussion: By accessing the topic feeds embedded in the Discovery Zone, users can consume hot topics and trends on Weibo, participate in specific topic discussions and interact with other platform users with similar topical interests. Super Topic: Super Topic is a community product to aggregate content around an influencer or a particular interest for users to follow. Users can join a Super Topic to access curated content, interact with users who share similar interests and participate in topic discussion. @Mention: Users can involve others into a particular feed and engage with them through @Mention these other users in the feeds. Meanwhile, users can easily participate in topics under which they are mentioned by going to the @Mention Page, which allows users to access all the feeds in which they are mentioned by other users. Products for Advertising and Marketing Customers The company seeks to provide advertising and marketing solutions to enable its customers to promote their brands and conduct effective marketing activities. The company provides its customers with analytical tools to enable them to track and improve the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns on its platform. The company’s advertising and marketing customers seek a full spectrum of online advertising and marketing services ranging from brand awareness to interest generation, sales conversion and loyalty marketing. The company considers the ultimate beneficiary of its online advertising services as an ‘advertiser’, meaning the party whose products, brand awareness or marketing activities benefited from the execution of advertisement. The company considers a party that it enters into an advertisement service contract with as its ‘customer’ from accounting perspective. As such, the company treats an advertising agency who enters into an advertisement service contract with the company as its customer, and such advertising agency may represent and serve multiple advertisers. If an advertiser directly enters into an advertisement service contract with it, the company will treat such advertiser also as its customer. Social Display Advertisements: Social display advertisements appear on the app’s opening page, the Discovery Zone banner and the website home page banner. When users click on a display advertisement, they may be redirected to the advertiser’s Weibo Page or a product page on other platforms for further engagement or conversion. Promoted Marketing: Leveraging the company’s large and engaged user base, and celebrities and KOLs’ influence on Weibo platform, its customers are enabled to amplify their visibility and the reach of their original marketing campaign, and thus achieve earned media on its platform. The company’s promoted marketing offerings include the following: Promoted Feeds: Promoted feeds appear in the user’s information feed alongside organic feeds. The company encourages its customers to produce feeds that have relevant information value similar to that of the users’ organic feeds. Customers may use the company’s SIG recommendation engine to better target their audience and improve the relevancy of the advertisement to the users. Super FST is an advertising platform specifically for the company’s promoted feeds advertising products under a real time bidding system. By leveraging Weibo’s data insights, Super FST can help customers precisely target users based on user attributes and social relations, enabling customers to achieve marketing objectives, such as improving customers’ branding, increasing website visits and advertisement conversion rate, growing fan bases, increasing app installation rates and collecting sales leads. Customer can place information feeds advertisements either through the company’s authorized distributor, or directly by themselves on Super FST. Super FST provides various advertising formats, such as multi-image post, image-text, video and matrix advertisements. Some of the company’s differentiated promoted feeds advertising offerings include: Fans Headline is a promoted service that guarantees a certain feed from the customer will appear at the top of the information feeds of the customer’s followers or the audience that the customer would like to target, enabling customers to leverage celebrities and KOLs’ rising influence on the company’s platform. Weibo Express is a promoted service mainly offered to customers with brand awareness purpose to reach and engage with a broad range of Weibo users. Promoted Trends and Search: Promoted trends and search products appear alongside user’s organic trends discovery and search behaviors, based on keywords, topics and trends. Promoted trends, which are labeled as ‘promoted’, appear among the list of trending topics, and can be virally distributed to reach broader audience on the platform. When a user clicks on a promoted trend, he will be redirected to the sponsor’s landing page. Promoted searches usually appear as the default keyword or topic in the search bar when triggered by users’ search behaviors of certain sponsored keyword or topic. Products for Platform Partners The company seeks to provide its platform partners with abundant tools and services, which improves Weibo’s content ecosystem with more diverse and high quality content, increases user engagement, enhances user experience, expands user scale and strengthens platform influence. The company’s platform partners include traditional and online media outlets, copyright content providers, KOLs, MCNs and other self-media, as well as app developers and data suppliers. The company offers different products tailored to different types of platform partners, including: Products for Copyright Content Providers: The company works with TV channels, online video websites and operators with copyright content through traffic resource exchange and content traffic sharing. Such cooperation enriches Weibo’s content ecosystem with diversified video content and strengthens Weibo’s brands influence, while at the same time enhancing partners’ user scales, and their brands influence. Standardized Products: The company’s standardized products to platform partners include, among others, Trends, Search, Video/Live Streaming, and Editing tools. Customized Products: The company provides customized products, such as content customization, pooling of copyright contents and user interaction development to its platform partners. Resource Services: The company provides its platform partners with operational resources to expand their brand influence, such as search list recommendation, trends list recommendation and Weibo app opening advertisements. Products for KOLs, MCNs and Other Self-Media: Self-media refers to organization partners with the ability to manage and provide services to top content creators on Weibo, such as MCNs, unions and e-commerce partners. These top content creators produce various types of content on Weibo in the form of video, live stream, images and text. The company provides self-media with standardized products and services to help them build up and monetize social assets, which in return enables them to produce more content and attracts more self-medias to its platform. The company’s products and services to them include: Back-end Management: The company provides standardized and specialized back-end management allowing KOLs and self-media to monitor their traffic performance and manage their accounts in a scalable manner. The company’s back-end management services include, among others, management of accounts, data, resources and growth. Traffic Supports: The company provides traffic distribution supports, such as account recommendation, content recommendation and access to certain exclusive functions. Product Services: The company provides self-media with product solutions for better displaying and promotion of its account and content through various channels, including information feeds, video feeds and users’ home pages. Products for Other App Developers: Under user consent, the company’s open application platform allows users to log into third-party applications with their Weibo account, which enables sharing of third-party content on its platform. User privacy is strictly protected during the authorization to third-party applications, which only have access to users’ basic public information. This product helps mobile app developers to acquire users while helps Weibo to acquire shared content from other apps and platforms. Weibo Wallet: The company’s Weibo wallet product enables platform partners to conduct interest generation activities on Weibo, such as handing out ‘red envelops’ and coupons to other users to build a bigger and more active fan base, and drive purchase conversion. Weibo wallet also enables individual users to purchase different types of products and services on Weibo, including those offered by the company, such as marketing services and membership, and those offered by its platform partners, such as e-commerce merchandises, financial products and virtual gifts. Sales and Marketing The company maintains its own sales operations team. The company was also aware that the advertising demands of both KA or SME customers have been shifting towards ‘branding-plus-performance’ and it has adjusted its advertisement products accordingly. The company transacts business either directly with customers or through third-party advertising agencies. The company’s sales team leverages Weibo’s unique position and advantages in social marketing to assist customers or their advertising agencies throughout their advertising campaign cycle, from designing advertisement campaigns and crafting advertisements in different formats to executing social marketing campaigns and providing analytical tracking. SINA acts as one of the company’s agents in servicing its advertising and marketing clients. The company has signed an agreement with SINA relating to these sales and marketing services. The company will continue to offer integrated solutions to customers with both SINA’s and its advertising and marketing solutions. Intellectual Property As of December 31, 2022, the company had registered 258 patents and applied for an additional 62 patents with the PRC State Intellectual Property Office. As of December 31, 2022, the company had registered 521 software copyrights with the PRC National Copyright Administration. The company has also registered domain names, including weibo.com, weibo.cn and weibo.com.cn. Seasonality Weibo has experienced seasonality in its online advertising business. Historically, advertising spending tends to be the lowest in the first quarter (year ended December 31, 2022) of each calendar year due to long holidays around the Lunar New Year. Competition The company is a media platform in nature, and major Chinese internet companies, such as Tencent and Bytedance, that provide online media, including content aggregation and distribution services, compete directly with the company for user traffic and user engagement, content, talent and marketing resources. The company is subject to intense competition from providers of similar services, as well as potentially new types of online services. These services mainly include messengers and other social apps and sites, such as Weixin/WeChat and QQ Mobile; multimedia apps (photo, video and live streaming, etc.), such as Douyin/TikTok, Kuaishou, Bilibili, Little Red Book (Xiaohongshu), iQiyi, Tencent Video, Youku and Xigua Video; and news apps and sites operated by other major internet companies, including Tencent, Bytedance and NetEase. The company also competes with internet companies that offer online-to-offline (O2O) service, purchase solutions and other performance-based advertising and marketing services, and digital media tailored to specific vertical, such as Meituan and Autohome. Regulation Regulations on Microblogs The Rules on the Administration of Microblog Development, issued by the Beijing Municipal Government in 2011, stipulate that users who post publicly on microblogs are required to disclose their real identity to the microblogging service provider, though they may still use pen names on their accounts. Microblogging service providers are required to verify the identities of their users. The Cyber Security Law, issued by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on November 7, 2016, which came into effect on June 1, 2017, requires network operators that provide network access or domain name registration services, landline or mobile phone network access, or that provide users with information publication or instant messaging services, to require users to provide a real identity when they sign up. CAC released the Provisions on the Administration of Microblog Information Services, or the Microblogs Provisions, on February 2, 2018, which came into effect on March 20, 2018. In order to comply with the abovementioned rules, the company has added additional clauses into the agreements between the users of its microblog service and it requesting its microblog users to register using their real names. Regulations on Advertisements The PRC government regulates advertising, including online advertising, principally through the SAMR. Since 2005, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce has exempted most enterprises (other than radio stations, television stations, newspapers and magazines, non-corporate entities and entities specified in other regulations) that engage in advertising business from the requirement of holding an operating license for advertising in addition to a relevant business license. The company conducts its online advertising business through Weimeng, which holds a business license that covers online advertising in its scope of business. On April 24, 2015, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress issued the PRC Advertising Law or the Advertising Law, effective on September 1, 2015 and amended on October 26, 2018 and April 29, 2021. On July 4, 2016, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce issued the Interim Measures for the Administration of Internet Advertising, or the Interim Measures, which became effective on September 1, 2016. On February 25, 2023, the State Administration for Market Regulation released the Measures for the Administration of Internet Advertising. To comply with these laws and regulations, the company includes clauses in all of its advertising contracts requiring that all advertising content provided by advertisers or advertising agencies must comply with the relevant laws and regulations. Regulations on Value-Added Telecommunications Services The Telecommunications Regulations, promulgated by the State Council in 2000, and were subsequently revised in 2014 and 2016 respectively, draw a distinction between ‘basic telecommunication services’ and ‘value-added telecommunication services’. Internet content provision services is a subcategory of value-added telecommunications services. According to the Catalogue of Telecommunications Business, most recently updated in June 6, 2019, the ‘value-added telecommunication services’ was further classified into two sub-categories and 10 items. Internet content provision services, or ICP services, is under the second subcategory of value-added telecommunications businesses. Under the Telecommunications Regulations, commercial operators of value-added telecommunications services must first obtain an operating license from the MIIT or its provincial level counterparts. The State Council issued the Administrative Measures on Internet Information Services concurrently with the Telecommunications Regulations in 2000 to regulate internet content provision services, which was subsequently amended on January 8, 2011. According to these measures, commercial internet content provision service operators must obtain an Internet Content Provision License from the relevant government authorities before engaging in any commercial internet content provision operations within the PRC. The Administrative Measures on Telecommunications Business Operating Licenses, promulgated by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) in 2001 and revised in 2009 and 2017, set forth the types of licenses required to operate value-added telecommunications services and the qualifications and procedures for obtaining such licenses. To comply with these PRC laws and regulations, Weimeng holds an Internet Content Provision License issued by the Beijing Telecommunications Administration. In addition, Weimeng holds an inter-regional Value-Added Telecommunications Services Operating License for provision of value-added telecommunication services nationwide. Restrictions on Foreign Ownership in Value-Added Telecommunications Services According to the Provisions on Administration of Foreign Invested Telecommunications Enterprises, promulgated by the State Council in 2001 and amended in 2008, 2016 and 2022, respectively, the ultimate foreign equity ownership in a value-added telecommunications service provider must not exceed 50%, except as otherwise stipulated by the state. Foreign investors that meet these requirements must obtain approvals from the MIIT and the Ministry of Commerce or their authorized local branches. The Notice of the MIIT on Intensifying the Administration of Foreign Investment in Value-added Telecommunications Services, issued in 2006, prohibits domestic telecommunications services providers from leasing, transferring or selling telecommunications business operating licenses to any foreign investor in any form, or providing any resources, sites or facilities to any foreign investor for their illegal operation of a telecommunications business in China. The National People’s Congress approved the Foreign Investment Law on March 15, 2019 and the State Council approved the Regulation on Implementing the Foreign Investment Law (the Implementation Regulations) on December 26, 2019, effective from January 1, 2020. They replaced the trio of existing laws regulating foreign investment in China, namely, the Sino-foreign Equity Joint Venture Enterprise Law, the Sino-foreign Cooperative Joint Venture Enterprise Law and the Wholly Foreign-invested Enterprise Law, together with their implementation rules and ancillary regulations. The Supreme People’s Court of China issued a judicial interpretation on the Foreign Investment Law on December 27, 2019, effective from January 1, 2020, to ensure fair and efficient implementation of the Foreign Investment Law. To comply with these PRC regulations, the company operates its platform through Beijing Weimeng Technology Co., Ltd (Weimeng). Weimeng holds an Internet Content Provision License and an Online Culture Operating License. Weimeng owns the domain names related to its operations and the company’s platform (weibo.com, weibo.cn, and weibo.com.cn), while the trademarks relating to its operations are held by Weibo Technology, Weimeng and SINA’s subsidiaries. Regulations on Online Game Operations and Cultural Products Online Cultural Products Weimeng holds an Online Culture Operating License issued by the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism on October 20, 2020 and valid through December 30, 2023. Regulations on Internet News Dissemination Weimeng provides a platform for the company’s users to post news, current topics and social events and it has obtained an Internet News Publication License on July 30, 2022 for providing news republishing and broadcasting platform services, which is valid through July 29, 2025. Internet Mapping Services Weimeng holds a surveying and mapping qualification certificate (Class B) issued by Beijing Municipal Commission of Planning and Natural Resources, valid through October 11, 2026. History Weibo Corporation was founded in 2009. The company was incorporated in 2010.