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"There's a significant change of leadership happening at Chinese Internet giant Sina, famed for its 'Weibo' microblogging service, after the company announced that CEO Charles Chao has replaced Yan Wang as chairman of the board.\r\n\r\nChao will combine the two roles and the change is effective immediately. Outgoing Wang, who is retiring, is to lead a Google-style charity foundation which the company has said it will set up.\r\n\r\nThe appointment is a further vote of confidence for Chao, who has overseen the rise of Sina Weibo, its\u00A0368 million user-strong\u00A0flagship service. Sina Weibo is largely viewed as China's de facto Twitter equivalent and, with Twitter blocked in China, it has grown into an essential channel of communication that challenges the government's control of news. Indeed, this year, Chinese authorities have clamped down hard on the site, and others like it, in a bid to regain some level of influence on exactly what is broadcast on the service.\r\n\r\nSina itself monitor and manages content in a bid to appease the government.\u00A0Yet despite the efforts of the state, which\u00A0introduced real name regulations and temporarily closed features of Sina Weibo in response to its role promoting speculation of a coup, the service is progressing well.\r\n\r\nChao recently revealed that he does not anticipate that the service will begin generating significant revenue until next year but it has already out\u00A0manoeuvred Tencent's rival Weibo service -- which claims higher user numbers -- and also-ran Sohu recently admitted\u00A0that\u00A0it is losing &amp;quot;the battle of the microblog.&amp;quot;\r\n\r\nAside from Weibo, Sina runs a popular portal and news site and it is focused on developing its mobile presence, since most of its Weibo user activity comes from phones.\r\n\r\nSina recently introduced Twitter-like promoted tweet adverts to the\u00A0three-year-old Weibo and leaked screenshots\u00A0suggest that it will soon adopt Google-style selected sharing and Facebook-esque user profiles.\r\n\r\nImage via Flickr / WorldEconomicForum"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/asia/2012/08/31/change-top-sina-ceo-charles-chao-becomes-chairman-board/>