For once, the rumours were correct: Alibaba, the e-commerce behemoth of China (and beyond), has been negotiating for months with Sina Corp for a piece of Weibo, the microblogging site that is known, accurately or not, as China's Twitter. In a country without a free news media, it passes for a public square, with proactive policing. Sina finally announced Monday - a public holiday in China - that it had sold a 18% stake to Alibaba for $586 million and would work together on fusing e-commerce with social-media. Cue Monday's rally in Sina's stock, which closed up 9.3% at $55.03. Alibaba also has an option to raise its stake to 30%. As Eric Jackson notes, an important factor for Alibaba is a competitive position vis-a-vis Tencent Holdings, which has its own hugely popular social media app (Weixin, or WeChat) and is trying to build up its e-commerce platform. Alibaba is preparing for an IPO that could put it in the upper reaches of initial stock sales, with echoes of Facebook hysteria to come.
Reported by Forbes.com 3 hours ago.
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