Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Baidu to shut down its microblogging service

China's largest search engine Baidu Wednesday announced to shut down its Twitter-like microblogging platform, Shuoba, on Aug 22, which means a victory for the Chinese portal Sina in the Twitter rival stakes, paidContent:UK reported.

Baidu said the reason for the closure is an unspecified “business adjustment”. However, according to industry experts, the real cause may be the platform’s failure to attract many Chinese users due to stringent real name verification features, Reuters reported.

Shuoba’s biggest competitor, Sina's microblogging service Weibo, has more than 140 million users. It is planning to expand out of China.

Shuoba has just 13.2 percent of active Chinese microblogging users, behind the Weibo’s 56.5 percent.

Image: paidContent:UK

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