EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: SINA Mobile, the Chinese firm behind Weibo, sees two ways to generate revenue from the mobile social networking service, said general manager Gaofei Wang in a recent interview with Mobile World Live. Firstly, Weibo will help SINA to attract “many customers who want to advertise on the net,” explained Wang. And then there are partnerships, for instance with mobile operators and handset manufacturers, which will generate revenue from value-added services, he noted.

Already Weibo, the micro-blogging service which is used by Chinese consumers to follow the activities of celebrities and brands, is generating the kind of traffic that should interest potential partners, be they advertisers or from the telecoms industry. Gaofei said that Weibo had attracted 50 million users by October last year and aims to double that figure to 100 million as soon as the latter part of this year. Those kind of traffic numbers explain why Weibo has become a significant force in the Chinese mobile market and is vastly more popular in the country than the likes of Facebook and Twitter. View the full interview here.