Georgia State Finance Professor Skeptical on Weibo IPO
Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, goes public today.An audio version of this story
It’s one of China’s most-visited websites. Despite its popularity, analysts are watching to see if Weibo closes way low.
That’s because of users like Lixin Huang. He’s one of 130-million active users the website claims as its customer base. But he’s not exactly what you’d call “active.”
“I used it sometime last year when my friends were using it,” he says.
Huang, a finance professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta, now uses WeChat. It’s growing at three times the rate of Weibo.
That’s one reason Huang is skeptical about today’s NASDAQ debut.
Another?
“审查”
(That’s the Chinese equivalent of the word censorship.)
China’s government bans everything from sexual innuendo to political dissent on the Internet. Jason Ng wrote the book, “Blocked on Weibo.’ He says China’s crackdown on that type of chatter means the site’s not as much fun as when it debuted.
“Censorship has already caused a chilling effect,” he says.
Even so, Ng says it’s still the go-to place for China’s nationwide conversation. “Obviously investors recognize the value of having that sort of space.”
Analysts just can’t wrap their yuan around how much that space is worth. That’s what makes today’s IPO so salacious.
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