Weibo Fair Value Estimate of US$15

Added on by C. Maoxian.

From Morningstar's Yue Yao, in his May 11th note on Weibo:

"... we have a  downbeat view for Weibo's long-term outlook for three reasons: First, the content censorship imposed by the Chinese government restricts the flows of information on  Weibo platform. Secondly, Weibo's user base is  geographically limited to China, so user growth could reach saturation earlier than Twitter; Finally, we believe the display  ads on Weibo are less accurate and of higher volume, which lead to an inferior user experience."

Here's an analyst who doesn't pussyfoot around the censorship issue. I don't think censorship is a big deal for most users, frankly, but it's a balancing act for the government -- they don't want to kill Weibo completely. As far as user experience goes, most Chinese love clutter.

Weibo will report earnings tomorrow (May 21); it'll be interesting to see how much ad revenue they've grown and how much of it comes from Alibaba alone. 

Core Philosophical Differences

Added on by C. Maoxian.

From Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster, in his May 12th note on Weibo ("overweight," $25 price target):

“Currently, Chinese Internet users cannot access Facebook or Twitter in China. We note that neither Facebook nor Twitter have been available in China for the life of Weibo, and we believe this market opportunity is a core reason for the popularity of Weibo. While there have been media reports about Facebook’s interest to enter China (less so for Twitter), we believe that there may be some core philosophical differences between how the Chinese government would like social media to function and the overall openness of either Facebook or Twitter. As a result, we believe it is unlikely that either Facebook or Twitter become available in China in the next two to three years.”

Or in the next twenty or thirty years. (If anyone has the Goldman Sachs note on Weibo, I'd appreciate it if you could email it to me.)

Morality Is All in the Point of View

Added on by C. Maoxian.

The other day my Twitter buddy @PlanMaestro tweeted this quote which intrigued me:

“If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; but if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.”

I asked him the source and he replied "Don Marquis," whom I'd never heard of, so I wikipedia'd him and learned that he was a turn of the century writer and contemporary of Mencken's.  This led me to buy a book, The Annotated Archy and Mehitabel, a collection of columns mainly written by Marquis's muse "archy," a free-verse poet reincarnated into the body of a cockroach.  One hundred years later archy's observations remain funny and revealing.

Here's archy's column from November 12, 1917:

boss my interest in science

is keen but my

sympathy with scientists is

declining very rapidly the 

more i see of them the less i

want them to see

me i heard a couple of

entomologists talking the

other day you want to be sure

and get over to the brooklyn

museum on thursday evening he said

there is going to be a 

lecture on a new

kind of killing bottle good

said the second one i will 

surely be there if there is

anything that is needed for 

the cause right now

it is a new killing bottle i

looked at him and he

seemed a kind hearted man too

just thoughtless likely

i thought what is sport to

you old fellow is

death to us insects morality

is all in the point

of view if the cockroaches

should start killing the 

humans just to study them there

would a howl go up from 

danville illinois to 

beersheba palestine even germans

are not gassed for study but

only in the way of

business and battle many would

think twice about stepping 

on a pacifist who would

send any number of potato bugs

to their funeral pyre without 

remorse justice as maurice

maeterlinck points out is not

inherent in the universe and what

man has put there he 

uses when he uses it at all

strictly for his own

purposes the world is so sad that

the only way to live

with it is to laugh at it

Sixto Rodriguez -- Like Janis

Added on by C. Maoxian.

A bit disturbed by the news that the young man who made the great documentary, Searching for Sugar Man, has committed suicide.

I bought both of Rodriguez's studio albums, Cold Fact, and Coming from Reality, after watching the movie.  Cold Fact has a lot of good tracks, but my favorite is probably Like Janis, which he sings live (in 2012) below:

Sixto Rodriguez - Like Janis (Live Paris 2012)

"... your selfishness is your cardinal sin."