Monthly active users of Weibo reached 227 million as of September 2015 with an increase of 33% YoY and daily active users reached 100 million with an increase of 30% YoY in Q3 2015 according to Weibo.
Normal users account for 96%, celebrity users account for 3% and verified users 1%.
76% Weibo users have high education background, 16% have medium education, and only 8% have low education background.
Users between 17 and 33 years old are major contributors of Weibo large information flow, which accounts for 83% mobile users. Male users account for more among Weibo users less than 24 years; and female accounts for more among users above 24 years old.
Eastern and southern citizens are more active on Weibo in 2015 in terms of regional economic level and education background.
Weibo VIP users increased by 60% in Q3 2015 compared to Q3 2014. With improving functions and services, more users upgraded to VIP membership in 2015.
Daily VIP applications increased by 98.1% YoY in Q3 2015. VIP revenues totaled over 100 million yuan (US$15.32 million) as of September 2015 according to Weibo. Weibo supports various kinds of payment methods for VIP users to pay for products and services.
Daily active users account for 81.5% Weibo users; however, the number of posts Weibo VIP users publish every day is 18 times more than daily active users.
Topics on society and celebrity are popular among Weibo users. Users can repost, comment and bookmark favorable posts, and reward quality long post authors.
Users spend more time on Weibo in 2015. Users utilizing Weibo only 1 day in each month becomes fewer while users using over 2 days increase obviously in 2015 compared to 2014.
Transaction values on Weibo Payment increased in the first three quarters of 2015 due to broadening payment usage such as paid articles, VIP members, fan headlines, rewarding, online shopping and so on.
More Weibo users reward favorable long posts authors with money in 2015. Long post authors gained about 44.54 million yuan (US$6.83 million) as of November 2015 with over 700,000 participators.
Male users account more for rewarding users. Users from 24 to 45 years old with steady income sources make up about 63% Weibo rewarding users, who normally pay a various small amount of cash as an appreciation to the quality content. The majority (82.9%) are common users and 84.2% have college education background and above. Users in eastern China account for the majority.
78.3% authors are male and 64.0% are verified users. High education background authors account for 85.9% and authors from 24 to 45 years account for the majority. These authors are most likely to live in big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong.
Verified authors on finance and media industry are more likely to get rewards from followers and transactions of those make up 57.4% of top 10 transaction values in 2015.
Paid article service has become an important channel for users to get information in 2015. Transaction sales from paid articles were 29.31 million yuan (US$4.49 million) as of November 2015 bringing revenues of about 130,000 yuan (US$19,925) for each author.
Women (59.3%) are more inclined to pay for paid articles than men. Common users account for 86.2% and users with college and above education background account for 88.6%. 68.6% paid article service users are between 24 and 33 years old.
Male account for 84.0% of authors who gain revenues from paid articles in 2015 and 94.7% of them have high education background. Major beneficiaries are from 24 to 45 years old. Beijing, Guangdong and Shanghai account for over 70% of paid article authors. Revenues of authors in finance industry represent 37.6% of total revenues from paid content service.
The number of Weibo verified accounts on finance reached about 123,920 as of H1 2015 which published 13,850,681 posts in total and received 80.32 billion views, 38.48 million re-posts, 16.70 million comments and 4.91 million bookmarks.
Travel is also a hot topic on Weibo. The number of Weibo searches on tourist attractions reaches 133 million in 2015 reaching 45.74 million users. Attractions in east and south China are mentioned most on Weibo.
The number of total views reached 98.91 billion from November 2014 to October 2015 covering 47.70 million users according to Weibo. Monthly released posts declined while total views increased resulting from superior quality content on Weibo.
Weibo users who are interested in sports reach 196 million in 2015 with an increase of 4.8% YoY. Sports topic related users reach 16.9 million.
Among individual verified users on sports, over half are professional athletes and 39.8% are sport enthusiasts. Among enterprise verified users 65.5% are institutions in 2015.
220 million Weibo users mention mother care products with a growth of 16% YoY in 2015. Active users unleashing needs of mother care products are 6.8 million. Weibo gathers 96.85 million fan clubs in 2015.
Also read: China Social Media Users Insights in 2015