Last week, Sina Corp and Microsoft China's Internet service arm announced a partnership that will allow users of Sina's Twitter-like microblog service and Microsoft's instant-messaging program to link their accounts.

The announcement came only days after a truce was called in the cat fight between domestic instant-messaging service leader Tencent and anti-virus tool Qihoo 360.

Tencent and Qihoo agreed to allow their software to be compatible with each other about a week after Tencent forced users to uninstall Qihoo security tool. The spat caused net users' great inconvenience. Tencent has more than 600 million active user accounts. Many market watchers said it was the perfect timing for Sina to boost its instant-messaging tool UC and a huge marketing opportunity for its microblog service.

Sina bought the instant message software UC for US$30 million in 2004, but the company's market share and product awareness for the service have been awkwardly low given Sina's dominant position among news portals.

In my view, Sina's ultimate target might not be the instant-messaging service after all. It's reasonable to think that the company is eying a much bigger target.

It's anyone's guess what that might be, but a real-time information source forged from the rich content of Sina and vast user base of MSN Messenger isn't beyond the realm of possibility.

Sina makes money from rich content on its portal, which basically covers all categories of news. Although advertising income benefited from big events such as the World Cup and the World Expo in Shanghai, it has yet to show strong and long-term growth potential.

Sina's focus right now is the microblog service. Although counterparts such as NetEase, Tencent and Sohu have launched similar services, each of them obviously lacks momentum.

This is mainly because Sina struck the first blow in the market and backed it up with extensive publicity and education about the service for users to become fully aware of its potential as a real-time platform.

Sina has always been a master of marketing and media relations. It has spared no effort in persuading celebrities to open official web blogs on its platform. That strategy obviously worked well, and now Sina is trying to repeat the process with the microblog. It has attracted entertainment stars, property tycoons and renowned economists to record their daily musings on the microblog.

It's easy to assume that Sina will quickly outpace similar services offered by rivals Tencent and NetEase.

A large number of hits naturally brings a wide range of news sources.

Moreover, domestic newspapers, magazines and financial service providers are also opening official accounts on Sina's service to update their latest articles.