China's Tencent Breaks Through $500bn Stock Market Capitalisation (bbc.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: The value of China's biggest social network company -- Tencent Holdings -- has overtaken that of Facebook. The company owns WeChat, an enormously popular messaging app in China, and hit gaming franchises such as League of Legends and Honour of Kings.It is the first Asian firm to surpass a market value of $500bn. Its chief executive, Ma Huateng, is now worth more than the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, according to Forbes. The magazine valued him at $48.3bn on Tuesday, making him the world's ninth richest man according to its ranking.

Comments

At least we know what our post-Facebook world

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

At least we know what our post-Facebook world will look like now. We can all plan to bore our grandkids with tales of "Silicon Valley" when American software mattered.

And zero relevance outside of China

[Anonymous Coward]

But thanks for telling us how much this random rich dude is worth on paper!

Cashless payments

[jbmartin6]

The huge value of WeChat is its widespread use as a payment app. One can pay with WeChat almost everywhere in large Chinese cities and even out into the remote areas. in Shanghai there are a lot of restaurants which only take WeChat or AliPay, and don't accept other payment methods at all. A lot of smaller vendors especially now only take WeChat/AliPay or cash, no cards. I think this is the real center of that valuation, not the chat/social media aspects.