China's Twitter introduces fees

Alibaba, China’s biggest e-commerce company, just announced that it is paying $586 million for an 18% stake in Sina Weibo, the online ad company’s Twitter-like social media platform. Alibaba will have the option to raise its stake to 30% in the future.

China's Sina Corp plans to launch an English version of its popular Twitter-like microblogging service, a company spokesman was quoted saying Tuesday.The Chinese portal did not provide further details on the new service, Dow Jones Newswires said, and AFP calls to Sina were not answered.Sina chief executive Charles Chao said last month Weibo had more than 140 million registered users at the end of April and the company aimed to boost the number to "well beyond" 200 million by the end of the year.

By John Mylant: What does the softening of the Chinese economy mean for companies like the Sina Corporation (SINA)? Here you have a company that generates income through advertising for its 324 million registered users. It has the largest online Chinese community in the world. But advertising is drying up as corporations become more conservative how they spend on a weakening economy.

China's popular micoblogging site Weibo said it was tightening controls over its Twitter-like service, state press said Monday, amid concerns over growing government interference on the web.Chief executive officer of Sina -- Weibo's parent company -- Charles Chao said Sunday the measures were to curb the spread of malicious rumours on the service, China News Service reported."There are lots of false information and rumours on Weibo, and this will cause great challenges to the government as well as vendors on our platform," the report quoted Chao as saying.

By Trefis: Sina (SINA), an online Chinese media company, recently launched an online payment service called WeiboPay, which has deepened its entry into the Chinese e-commerce market. The latest move also puts an end to rumors regarding possible partnership between Alibaba and Sina. We believe the latest move augurs well for Sina in the long run on account of the strong opportunity in the Chinese e-commerce market.

With various "gun control" proposals flying fast and furious (precisely the reactionary kneejerk reaction Ron Paul warned would happen), some of which as brilliant as RFIDing every gun in existence, supposedly including the tens of millions of illegal and unregistered ones, it is perhaps appropriate to see how another authoritarian government - China - deals with its own equivalent of the touchy Second Amendment, its "First", or the right to free speech in a society which

Sina Weibo, China's biggest Twitter-like microblogging platform, introduces a fee for premium features after posting a financial loss.