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"China's Sina Weibo is continuing to investigate opportunities to diversify its Twitter-like with the closed beta launch of its own bullet board service (BBS), 'Weiba'.\u00A0The site, which is available to a closed set of users, including a number of celebrities and other high-profile users, can be found at\u00A0weiba.weibo.com.\r\n\r\nThose not part of the test batch will get Sina's own take on the fail whale - perhaps better know as the not-yet-eligible-whale:\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThose few that are on the Web forum, or will get the chance to join in if/as/when it is expanded, will see the following profile page below- which is remarkably similar to the Baidu PostBar\u00A0forum, know as 'Tieba':\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nWeiba allows users to create threads, invite users to participate and respond and post new comments, although much \u00A0of the additional functionality remains unclear at this stage.\r\n\r\nPostBar is the undisputed leader in the space, so Sina will have its work cut out if it is to publicly release Weiba as a rival.\r\n\r\nWriting on the eighth year anniversary of the introduction of PostBar last year, Baidu reveals the considerable size and influence of its online forum:\r\nBaidu PostBar has quickly grown to become the largest Chinese-language threaded discussion forum in the world, and is home to millions of unique discussion topics. It\u2019s a social community that is intimately intertwined with search, capable of accurately pinpointing user needs through keywords.\r\n\r\nPostBar\u2019s largest discussion bar \u201CWorld of Warcraft\u201D (\u9B54\u517D\u4E16\u754C\u5427\u00A0m\u00F3sh\u00F2ush\u00ECji\u00E8 b\u0101) has accrued 12.5 million topics, more than 200 million posts, and is well-known for being the birthplace of the popular Internet meme about Jia Junpeng.\r\nFor Sina, the move is a further exploration of additional services and add-ons that it can use to increase its interaction with its user base, which it says now number 300 million sign-ups, with the potential to expand its business and monetisation.\r\n\r\nWhile Sina Weibo draws comparisons with Twitter for the influential role it plays distributing news and conversation across Chinese Web space, it remains more committed to trialling and testing new features than its North American counterpart.\r\n\r\nFor instance, Sina Weibo includes a raft of standalone and stand-aside projects that include Sina Video, social video site Kandian, a bevy of in-service apps -- such as games --\u00A0Tumblr-like light-blogging, groups, enterprise accounts, a news portal, instant messenger (IM), location-based services and more.\r\n\r\nSina recently introduced a 'VIP' service that offers users premium services for the cost of $1.47 (10 yuan), with discounts for for longer subscriptions of up to two years. That move alone is unlikely to revise the tide, which saw the company's\u00A0most recent earnings in the first quarter of 2012 record a net loss of $ 13.7 million.\r\n\r\nImage via MomoBkk, PC Online"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/asia/2012/06/29/chinas-sina-weibo-is-testing-a-web-forum-to-diversify-its-microblog-service-and-rival-baidu/>