Weibo to Launch Interest-Based Community App “Planet”

China’s leading microblogging platform Weibo will launch a new interest-based interactive community app called “Planet” (星球), which is a revision and upgrade of its previous app “Planet Video,” Tech Planet reported on Monday.

Planet will mainly be a social media platform for Weibo users to follow celebrities and find communities with common interests. At present, the Planet app has millions of communities, covering local areas, lifestyle, 2D, beauty, campus, food, and more. Users can slide to switch between communities, and it is also equipped with a messaging system independent of Weibo. In addition, various Weibo stars will reportedly join the new platform.

Generally speaking, Planet is an interest-based community product based on Weibo, which extends the scenarios around the stars and communities of the popular social media site.

Earlier this month, Weibo released its first-quarter financial report, showing that as of the end of the period, the monthly active users of the platform reached 582 million, a net increase of 51 million year-on-year, and the daily active users reached 252 million, a net increase of 22 million year-on-year.

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This upgrade from Planet’s original video-based community to a broader interest-based interactive community reveals that Weibo hopes to build this next product around its own system. Based on its position and traffic among online entertainment platforms, the new Planet product is expected to provide Weibo with sustainable revenue and user growth. Industry analysts believe that this change is in line with the company’s strategy of focusing on improving efficiency, expanding user scale and enhancing user activity.