SINA Shares Popped: What You Need to Know

Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.

What: Shares of Chinese dot-com darling SINA (Nasdaq: SINA  ) popped by 14% today on reports that Facebook may at long last be preparing to file for its IPO as early as next week.

So what: As one of the most anticipated public offerings in as many years, it is sparking interest throughout social media companies, who are seeing healthy gains today. The proposed offering could potentially value the social networking giant between $75 billion to $100 billion, and was delayed from last year. The news has sparked a sector-wide rally, with other social media friends like Quepasa, Zynga, and LinkedIn enjoying strong gains, among others.

Now what: SINA operates a Twitter-esque micro-blogging service in China called Weibo, while Twitter itself may be looking at an IPO next year. Social media has become somewhat of a bubble, as investors have been grabbing anything remotely related as a proxy since Facebook has so far been out of reach. Some of these names have dubious long-term prospects, like Zynga or Groupon, for example. The good news for SINA is that beyond its Weibo service, it has many other solid businesses.

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