(Photo : Sina WeMeet)

After Tencent launched WeChat and NetEase launched Yixin, Sina launched WeMeet (Weimi in Chinese) on Monday. According to Financial Times, Charles Chao, CEO of Sina, indicated in an interview that WeMeet, a new social media product, was designed as a complement to Weibo. WeMeet mainly focuses on group messaging and supporting functions include group chatting, subscribing to news and sharing photos, etc.

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It is reported that, the newly launched Instant Messaging product, WeMeet, is developed by Hangzhou Kuyue Tech which is a company Sina invested in. The WeMeet App has already been available in App store since August 22^nd. Different from WeChat and Yixin, WeMeet allows users to import contacts from Sina Weibo and focus on group chatting. In other words, WeMeet users can not only enjoy Weibo features and join dozens of interest-based public groups, but also set up private chatting groups and personalize the chatting. In addition, group chatting supports audio, text and location sharing.

WeMeet further introduces a new snapchat-like feature specially designed for the group chatting. Messages shared in a group will vanish from the group in 24 hours and will disappear in 3 seconds after having been read.

Before WeMeet, China Telecom and Netease jointly launched Yixin as a challenger to WeChat. Some analysts pointed out that, different from Yixin which started from scratch, WeMeet will benefit from its huge Weibo user base. According to Sina's latest Second-Quarter Earnings Report, up to the end of this June, the number of daily active Sina Weibo users has reached 54 million, enjoying an increase of 8.3 percent from this March. What's more, according to Charles Chao, WeMeet will mainly focus on groups, serving as a complement to Weibo. Focusing on group chatting differentiates WeMeet from other competitors, which prevents WeMeet from directly competing with WeChat.