Introduction of Weibo:

Sina Weibo is the leading social media network in China. Weibo is frequently clarified as the Chinese, corresponding to Facebook or Twitter, two choked facilities in central China. Sina Weibo was launched in 2009. There are numerous websites in China that propose micro-blogging facilities; however, Weibo is the most prevalent one across the Chinese network. After the three years of its launch, Weibo had 503 million listed users already, which is an important mainstream of the 640 million users over the internet that China grasps (Koetse, 2015). Weibo has a 140-words restriction to every post, and operators are fragments of a “follower-followed system.” The association among followers and followed is unidirectional; one user ‘follow’ another user and see their ‘Weibo’s (posts), give thumbs up and share with their friends, starved of being followed him back. It is conceivable for users to post their pictures, upload videos or GIFs.

Overview of the Social Media Industry:

As most social media profiles and their processes are free-of-cost, the challenges for social networking companies has been to adapt their immense client bases. By March 2019, Facebook generally had 2.4 billion users monthly (the greater part is on Smartphones), and LinkedIn accounts users are greater than 610 million, though Twitter had built up greater than 330 million users (research). For instance, LinkedIn has very fruitful in making incomes. It does not just sell promotions, yet in addition, offers memberships to account for upgradations for clients who are concerned about more profound services. Meanwhile, LinkedIn, to a great extent, focused on business experts and employment searchers, is a famous route for sales representatives to begin.

Analysis of business risks:

Compliance Infringement

Across the Social networking sites, there are threats of imparting data and information that disregards appropriate regulations and procedures, counting violation of brands and patents, data safekeeping problems, Jobs related problems, breach of protection privileges, and misconduct of automated messages. There are moreover possible threats in these areas reliant on the Organization’s preservation procedures or e-revelation prerequisites (DELOACH, 2018).

Competitor threats:

Deciding to depend essentially on conventional advertising rehearses and different types of client dialogues and joint effort may threaten to lose market share to rivals, misusing the discernments of social media produces. Littler’s new companies and certain innovative organizations have seen Social media as crucial to their advancement and are utilizing the innovation to arrive at customers and markets regardless of having not many employees (DELOACH, 2018). This might present an upsetting threat to the largest, more established rivals if they disregard the complications of social networking sites in positioned market niches that may be misrepresented by new contestants and nimbler companions.

Brand Hijacking

Over the internet, there is steadily a threat of a fraudulent third party taking the Organization’s corporate image by not informing the company to get entree to customers and potentials, as well as personal data. Such threats integrate the unapproved exploitation of company logos and names, just as product falsifying and diverse frauds (DELOACH, 2018). A few organizations host connected third gatherings to report all employments of and references to their association’s names via web-based networking media/web destinations with the aim of utilizing this data to adjust different parts of their business to address protests, just as client and worker fulfillment issues.

Analyze Trends

Analysis of Weibo’s Financial Statement:

Upon analyzing Weibo’s financial statements, we came to know that net income would decrease from $572,620,000 to $492,833,000 in the year 2018 to 2019. Their total revenue decreases from $1,718,518,000 to $1,766,914,000 based on previous year. There are a variety of factors that causes a reduction in revenues and income of Weibo Company. Their current Assets increases from 2,469,098,000 to 3,636,178,000 as per the previous year. Their Liabilities also rise, which means that the Weibo company owns a huge amount of loans from creditors to run their business, which surely increases the burden on the company’s financial performance.

Legal Agreement with VIEs:

Under the legally binding agreements with the VIE’s, which fused as constrained obligation organizations under the PRC Organization Law, creditors of the VIE’s don’t have a response to the general credit of the Organization. The aggregate sum of expenses and costs apportioned as of SINA to the VIE’s was $21.4 million, $25.6 million and $27.6 million for the years Completed on December 31, 2017, 2018 and 2019, separately.

Execution of ASU 2016-01:

Before the execution of ASU 2016-01 of every 2018, the Gathering utilized cost technique to represent value ventures on which the Gathering doesn’t have a critical impact. In the wake of implementing ASU 2016. The group estimates interests in value protections, at fair value through profit. The group chooses to record these reserves at cost, fewer damages, add or deduct ensuing adjustments for discernible price variations.

Long term investments:

For the phase completed on December 31, 2018, and 2019, the Weibo’s group put resources into isolated cutting edge organizations accumulated $134.8 million and $268.7 million, separately, which were represented underneath value ventures lacking promptly definable fair value. These ventures were to additionally grow or fortify the Weibo’s biological system and also incorporated a consequent reserve of $100 million in Yixia Co., which is a creator of versatile video applications. The ensuing interest in Yixia Tech brought about a total interest in the Organization of $290 million before the $214.7 million damage perceived in 2019. The group likewise put $97.3 million and $91.9 million in organizations, which were represented further down equity strategy, in 2018 and 2019, separately. These ventures, for the most part, incorporated a $48.0 million and a $45.0 million interest in two capitalizing reserves in 2018 and a $57.4 million interest in an organization providing customer investment services in 2019.

Visualization to aid in risk assessment:

References

DELOACH, J. (2018, March 6). 10 Risks Companies Face in Using Social Media. Retrieved from Corporate Compliance Insights: https://www.corporatecomplianceinsights.com/social-business-means-risk-profile/

Koetse, M. (2015, September 21). An Introduction to Sina Weibo: Background and Status Quo. Retrieved from What’s on Weibo: https://www.whatsonweibo.com/sinaweibo/

research, P. (n.d.). Overview of the Social Media Industry, Business, and Industry Trends Analysis. Retrieved from Plunkett Research Ltd: https://www.plunkettresearch.com/trends-analysis/overview-of-the-social-media-industry/

(2019). Weibo Annual Report. WEIBO CORPORATION.