China's Weibo overtakes Twitter in market capitalisation

Beijing, Feb 14: In a surpise for the social media fraternity, Chinese microblogging website Weibo has for the first time overtaken Twitter with its market capitalisation hitting $11.3 billion, surpassing Twitter's $11.1 billion market cap which is a difference of about $200 million.

According to a report in Financial Times, shares rallied on back of Alibaba-owned Weibo's ability to monetise its subscriber base. This is the first time Weibo's market capitalisation has risen past Twitter on a close-of-day basis.

Weibo currently has more than 340 million monthly average users, compared to 319 million Twitter monthly active users. Twitter's share price dropped last week after the company missed revenue forecasts.

According to media reports, Twitter's revenue growth came in at just one per cent, a far cry from the 48 per cent year-over-year growth Twitter reported during the same period in 2016.

Last time Weibo came close to eclipsing Twitter was when the latter's shares tumbled in October -- at a time businesses like Google, Walt Disney and Salesforce were rumoured to take over the company, the report said.

Twitter's two top executives, Jeffrey Siminoff, Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion and Renee Atwood, Chief Human Resources Officer, have announced to leave the company.

Twitter is going through a major overhaul under CEO Jack Dorsey as many top-notch executives have quit the company in the recent past. Dorsey brought in two board members in a bid to revive the company and earn the trust of investors.

Twitter editorial director Karen Wickre and Shariq Rizvi, who confounded the direct response ads team at Twitter, announced their departures in late 2016.

Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Adam Messinger and its Vice President for products Josh McFarland also quit.

Twitter's Chief Operating Officer (COO) Adam Bain who was in-charge of the micro-blogging website's revenue business also quit the company.