SINA Corp said it will invest US$160 million in Weibo this year and launch a self-service advertising system to enterprise microblogging account owners as it seeks to make a profit from the popular Weibo service.

The investment will be used to upgrade infrastructure and build the advertising system, CEO Charles Chao said in a conference call yesterday, without elaborating further.

Weibo, touted as the Chinese version of Twitter, now has 300 million registered users and the number of daily active users is around 9 percent of the total user base.

Chao has said he hoped Weibo will host 1 million enterprise accounts by the end of this year, from 130,000 now.