(Telecompaper) Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba has acquired an 18 percent stake in Chinese microblogging service Weibo for USD 586 million. Alibaba bought the stake as part of a broader alliance with Weibo's owner Sina to develop new e-commerce and marketing services over the social network. Sina, which runs China's biggest web portal, will cooperate with Alibaba in the areas of user account connectivity, data exchange, online payment and online marketing, among other things, as well explore new business models for social commerce based on the interactions of the hundreds of millions of users on Weibo and Alibaba's e-commerce platforms. The strategic alliance is expected to generate USD 380 million in advertising and social commerce services revenues for Weibo over the next three years. Alibaba also receives an option to increase its stake in Weibo to 30 percent in future.