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专题四 社会文化类 专项强化·训练 A (2015湖南怀化一模) Sina Weibo,one of the country’s most popular micro-blogging sites,has launched a paid service.For a 10 yuan ($ 1.57) monthly fee,users get a membership on their Sina Weibo accounts. According to Xu Yuanyuan,a member of the marketing team at Sina,the move is to guarantee a more convenient and safer environment for users.But despite the company’s efforts to increase income,it seems that most of its 300 million users still prefer the free version. The premium membership (高级会员) plans,announced by the company on Monday,brought about negative comments from its users. “The current service is good enough for me,”said a Beijing-based micro-blogger.“I don’t really need those value-added services and it might be a waste of money.I might consider paying for it if some more features are added.” Dong Xu,an analyst with consulting firm Analyses International,said that Sina shouldn’t expect a great increase in income brought by the new services.The free services are enough for most users,Dong said.“The company has been making attempts at different profit models since last year.A potential source of income could be gaming.Games and advertisements are so far the two biggest sources of income,” she said. Other micro-blogging service providers have not yet followed suit.Fang Gang,vice-president of rival Sohu,said via e-mail on Tuesday that Sohu’s micro-blogging service will never charge users.“It’s good news for us.Users can come to our website if they have to pay for services (at Sina),”Fang said. | 
