Sina (新浪), one of China’s largest Internet companies, reported revenues of $130.3 million for the third quarter of 2011, up from $108.2 million last year.

But some Chinese media outlets have reported that, despite these figures, Chinese users of the popular microblog service could be getting fatigued.

At Netease, the website of another internet giant, Guo Jianlong (郭建龙), a tech writer whose Netease microblog has over 20,000 followers, speculated the most used microblog might be declining soon:

Anything that is being discussed all over the place is probably reaching its “bubble” stage. And this conclusion is very possibly applicable to Sina microblog.

When Charles Chao [CEO of Sina] published his financial report it announced that registered users for microblog had reached 250 million. But independent figures do not comply, it has in fact shown that Sina microblog has reached a period of recession, and has for six months lost its momentum.

However, we can’t judge if this recession period is only temporary or if it will last.

As you can see from the graphs by the web analytics firm Alexa, daily pageviews and time on site have been declining for a couple of weeks.

On Guo Jianlong’s Netease microblog, he defends his use of Alexa as a way of comparing data:

jlguo ： Alexa is not a completely accurate tool. But I don’t really think  the most important thing is the exact figures, but only their comparable situation.In six months, the traffic split between fixed and mobile [users] should not show any significant change . As long as this change isn’t large, then Alexa can reflect the trend. Of course, the bubble of Sina microblog is still to do with its mode for profit, which will still need to be supported through ads.

Finally, commentators have pointed to the sudden increase in figures for all products related to Sina: its blogging platform, so popular in 2005, was driven largely by celebrities,  just as the microblog is today. The social networking and chat functions for its blog died. Will the Sina microblog will be a fully functioning entity in the future?

Like all the other Sina products, it will have to survive by making itself the center of the media and by extension, advertisements.

Are you getting tired of social media and microblogging, or is this just a story of a blogger on a competing network spreading bad news about a rival? Let us know in the comments.