Twitter was blocked in China, so a Beijing web portal built its own. Sina launched Weibo in August 2009, and within a few years it was where China argued, joked and broke news. Movie stars posted there. Train crashes and scandals surfaced there before the state media covered them. By the time Weibo filed to go public in 2014, Alibaba owned a large stake, and Sina wanted Wall Street to put a price on China's loudest public square.

A Portal Builds a Feed

Sina was one of China's original web portals, a site of news headlines and email. Under chief executive Charles Chao, it saw that people wanted to talk back. Weibo, which means microblog, let users post short messages, photos and video and follow anyone. Sina invited celebrities to join first, and their fans followed them in. The bet was that a huge, public, mobile audience could be sold to advertisers, the way Twitter and Facebook were selling theirs in the United States.

A Weak Start, a Long Run

Weibo priced on April 17, 2014, at $17 a share, the bottom of its range, and cut the offering to 16.8 million shares. It opened below that price on Nasdaq. Then buyers came in, and the stock closed just over $20, up about 19 percent. Weibo kept growing as China moved onto smartphones. In 2021 it added a second listing in Hong Kong. Weibo still trades on Nasdaq under WB.

Cover: Java sparrow on plum branch, Utagawa Hiroshige. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a songbird on a plum branch (chatter).