微博市值超過Twitter

China’s Weibo is worth more than US rival Twitter, after a rallying share price drove its market capitalisation to $11.3bn, surpassing the US messaging platform’s $11.1bn.

中國的微博(Weibo)市值已超過美國競爭對手Twitter，此前微博的股價大漲推動其市值升至113億美元，超過了Twitter的111億美元。

Twitter’s share price dropped late last week after the company missed revenue forecasts and failed to deliver on hopes of a “Trump bump”. By contrast, shares in Weibo, part-owned by Alibaba, have been climbing on the back of a rising number of subscribers and its growing ability to wring more cash out of them.

上週晚些時候，由於未達到營收預測且未能兌現關於“特朗普提振”的期待，Twitter股價大跌。相比之下，由阿里巴巴(Alibaba)部分持股的微博的股價在用戶數量不斷增加和盈利能力越來越強的推動下不斷攀升。

Weibo came close to eclipsing Twitter when the latter’s shares tumbled in October when it transpired that rumoured suitors, including Walt Disney and Salesforce, had failed to materialise. This is the first time Weibo’s market capitalisation has risen past Twitter’s on a close-of-day basis, according to Bloomberg data.

去年10月，微博的市值曾一度逼近Twitter的市值，當時，包括華特迪士尼(Walt Disney)和Salesforce的潛在收購方未能正式發起收購，導致Twitter股價大跌。根據彭博社(Bloomberg)的數據，這是微博首次在股市收盤時市值超過Twitter。

While Weibo’s usurping of Twitter’s position owes much to the US company’s falling stock, the switchover comes as China’s technology groups are narrowing the gap with their western rivals on various metrics — and in many more cases are overtaking them in terms of offerings to consumers.

雖然微博市值超過Twitter與後者股價大跌有很大的關係，但這種轉變說明中國科技集團正在很多指標上縮小與西方競爭對手之間的差距，而且在爲消費者提供產品和服務方面，在很多時候超過了西方同行。

Alibaba, for example, is dwarfed by ecommerce peer Amazon when it comes to market capitalisation: $255bn v $395bn. But its net income of $2.47bn in the three months to the end of December put Amazon’s $749m in the shade and its business model, which via Ant Financial also encompasses payments, is much broader.

例如，阿里巴巴雖然在市值上不如電商同行亞馬遜(Amazon)，兩者的市值分別爲2550億美元和3950億美元，但是它去年第四季度24.7億美元的淨利潤卻遠超後者的7.49億美元，而且阿里巴巴的商業模式——通過螞蟻金服(Ant Financial)還提供支付服務——要寬泛得多。

One area where some Chinese companies have lagged behind substantially is in monetising their subscriber bases, seen by many investors as leaving huge potential for growth. Subscribers to Moments, the Facebook-like news feed run by Tencent, for example, may see just one ad — a fraction of those shown on the US social network.

在把用戶基礎轉化爲利潤方面，中國科技公司仍嚴重落後，但這也讓許多投資者看到了巨大的增長潛力。例如，騰訊(Tencent)運營的類似Facebook新聞服務的朋友圈(Moments)的訂戶可能只看到一個廣告——這是美國社交網絡上顯示的廣告數量的一個零頭。

Nasdaq-listed Weibo, which has more than 340m monthly average users, is similarly behind.

在納斯達克(Nasdaq)上市、月平均用戶超過3.4億人的微博，也在這方面落後。

Jialong Shi, internet analyst at Nomura, calculates that Weibo’s annual average revenue per monthly user of $1.90 in 2015 was a quarter of Twitter’s $6.50 and one-sixth of Facebook’s $11.30. These numbers continued to improve in the first three quarters of 2016, but are still well behind those of its US peers.

野村證券(Nomura)互聯網分析師施加龍（音）計算的結果是：2015年，微博每個月度用戶帶來的年均營收爲1.90美元，只有Twitter（6.50美元）的四分之一和Facebook（11.30美元）的六分之一。雖然2016年前三季度的數據有所改善，但微博在這項指標上仍遠遠落後於美國競爭對手。

“The social platform ad market is very nascent in China,” said one Hong Kong analyst, who noted that it accounts for 8 per cent of the online ad market against 20 per cent in the US and is dominated by Tencent Moments and Weibo.

香港的一名分析師稱：“中國的社交平臺廣告市場還處於非常早期的階段。”他指出，中國社交平臺廣告在中國在線廣告市場的佔比僅爲8%（而且由騰訊朋友圈和微博主導），而美國的這一比例爲20%。

While Weibo has been dubbed China’s Twitter it is in some ways more akin to YouTube with a dash of Instagram thrown in. Videos and live streaming, much of it user-generated, are popular on Weibo, a reflection of the heavily youth-based audience, with 88 per cent under 33.

雖然微博一直被喻爲中國的Twitter，但從某種角度來說，它更像YouTube和Instagram的結合體。視頻和直播內容（很多是用戶生成的）在微博上非常流行，這與微博用戶大多爲年輕人有很大關係。微博88%的用戶都是年齡在33歲以下的年輕人。

Twitter is blocked in mainland China, although still claims millions of users who access the site through virtual private networks.

雖然Twitter在中國內地遭到屏蔽，但Twitter仍聲稱有數百萬用戶通過虛擬專網訪問該網站。