Chinese social media giant Sina Weibo overtakes its U.S. counterpart Twitter in market capitalization for the first time ever during trading on Monday. [Photo:zol.com.cn]

Chinese social media giant Sina Weibo overtook its U.S. counterpart Twitter in market capitalization for the first time ever during trading on Monday.

Nasdaq-listed Sina Weibo saw its market value rise to about 11.32 billion U.S. dollars at one point during trading on Monday, while that for Twitter, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, stood at about 11.22 billion U.S. dollars at the same time. It is the first time the Chinese microblog service has outperformed its U.S. counterpart in market cap,

Sina Weibo's share price closed at 52.91 U.S. dollars per share while that for Twitter stood at 16.73 U.S. dollars, with the former lagging behind the latter by about 600 million U.S. dollars at market close.

Financial reports for the second quarter of this year showed that Twitter raked in about 602 million U.S. dollars in Q2, more than quadruple that of Sina Weibo.

However, Sina Weibo showed stronger growth momentum in revenue and user growth. Twitter had about 313 million monthly active users by the end of Q2, up only three percent year on year, while Sina Weibo boasted 282 million monthly active users, surging 33 percent compared with Q2 2015.

Sina Weibo's share price is expected to reach 70 dollars in mid-2017, according to an estimate by international investment bank J.P. Morgan, thanks to its strong user and revenue growth.