China’s short messaging social network Weibo has reported that its monthly active users have now reached 198 million, based on the company’s latest earnings report for the first quarter of 2015.
According to an article published on techinasia.com, the number rose by 11.2 percent, compared to the previous quarter record of 175.7 million, indicating a rise of 38 percent year on year.
The article said that in March, the company hit 89 million daily active users, which rose by 34 percent from the same period last year.
Also, 86 percent of Weibo users are mobile device users who access their social network. The company said that its monthly active users using mobile devices increased by 57 percent from the same period last year.
According to the company's report, its monthly active user growth has doubled in the last quarter, an increase from 5.2 percent in Q4 2014 as it beat revenue projections with earnings worth $96.3 million, an increase of 43 percent from the same period last year.
The company added that despite a loss of $2.8 million, it was able to trim down the loss from $47.4 million a year ago to $15.4 million last quarter. It would be able to bounce back by the time the next quarterly report is released, when the company is estimated to gain net revenues of up to $105 million.
The company said in its earnings report that the planned initiatives with Alibaba, which invested $586 million in Weibo in 2013, is expected to begin in the second quarter.
Apple CEO Tim Cook had given Weibo an encouragement earlier this week, when it joined the network and quickly gained a following of 100,000 users in just 30 minutes.
Despite a slow growth compared to messaging app WeChat, China's smartphone generation prefers Weibo as the social network of their choice. WeChat has 549 million monthly active users in the first quarter of this year, an increase of 39 percent from the previous quarter.
Weibo posted its full Q1 2015 earnings report at http://seekingalpha.com/pr/13521646-weibo-reports-first-quarter-2015-results.