Tencent

Like Heraclitus said, the only constant is change. And in the digital age, change comes fast and furious, indeed. When we last left WeChat, their registration numbers for 2012 had just come out and the service was making its first forays into the West. There were over 300 million users of the free messaging service in China, and the first few million users outside of China had started signing up. Six months on from our mention, WeChat (or “WeiXin” (微信) as it’s known domestically), has boomed steadily within China and…

If you live in China, you have almost certainly heard of Tencent and QQ. If you don’t, and you haven’t, this post is definitely for you. Before I even arrived in China, I was hearing from family and friends about QQ, an instant messaging system, and how popular it is in China. However, it wasn’t until I got here that I realized just how big Tencent actually is, and how important a role its platforms like QQ play in the day-to-day lives of consumers. If companies and marketers are looking…

2012 has already seen a steady increase in the number of Chinese press releases my team is handling; up from the 12,000 or so seen in 2011. Now, I’m obviously delighted to see our traffic continue to increase, especially given the impressive growth in releases that we see from internationally-based companies looking to generate exposure in China; however, there is a strikingly important observation that I would like to share with everyone – writing a great English headline doesn’t automatically translate into a great Chinese headline. This observation is a…