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July 14, 9:27 am

Sina Weibo to Launch “Wei Bi” Virtual Currency in Q3

July 13, Sina Weibo, China’s most popular microblogging service, is planning to launch a virtual currency in the third quarter of this year, its first step to monetizing the service, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing an unnamed person familiar with the matter.

“Wei Bi [as the currency is known] is still at the development stage currently and it will be tested on a small portion of users in Q3”, the source said. “It will be widely available at the end of this year.”

Sina Weibo took control of a user account called “Wei Bi” in April, the source said.

The microblog platform of Chinese internet giant Sina Corp. (NASDAQ:SINA) has over 140 million users, according to publicly available information.

The company recently released plans for the currency in a statement. It will be used to pay for value-added services at the exchange ratio of 1:1 to renminbi.

Goldman Sachs said in an earlier report that online advertising and applications will be the main revenue stream for Sina Weibo, and estimated that Sina Weibo will generate $21million in 2012.

edited by Jin ZHANG