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Tencent's WeChat Hits 1 Billion Milestone as Lunar New Year Boosts Monthly Active Users (scmp.com)

Posted by msmash on from the moving-forward dept.

WeChat hit the milestone of one billion monthly active users during the Lunar New Year in February, a "remarkable number" according to Tencent Holdings chief executive Pony Ma Huateng who disclosed the figure at a Two Sessions media briefing in Beijing on Monday. From a report: The user numbers are up from 980 million in the third quarter of 2017, as reported in Tencent's third quarter results. More than 688 million WeChat users sent or received digital versions of hongbao, the traditional Chinese red packet containing cash and given as a gift during the new year holiday season, pushing the monthly active users of WeChat hongbao to 800 million, Ma revealed on Saturday, as reported by Chinese tech media 36Kr.

25 comments

  1. Thank god those folks in Beijing are recording it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Good thing we have the folks in Beijing keeping an eye on those WeChat users!

  2. Still completely irrelevant outside of China by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why are we hearing about this?

    1. Re:Still completely irrelevant outside of China by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except for all the countries and places outside of China that use Wechat to make payments. You probably still get wankers cramp from writing cheques. You also probably don't know how to spell it properly either.

    2. Re:Still completely irrelevant outside of China by cayenne8 · · Score: 1
      ...I dunno.

      But, at least its better than them going "pee pee in our coke".

      ;)

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    3. Re:Still completely irrelevant outside of China by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      Why are we hearing about this?

      Because, whether you like it or not, WeChat, or something like it, is the future.

      WeChat is like voice, text, Facebook, Instagram, Visa, MasterCard, Venmo, and PayPal, all rolled into one with plenty of additional features.

      Many Chinese no longer bother to carry cash at all. Some street vendors no longer accept cash, since 99% of their customers pay with WeChat, and cash raises the risk of robbery.

      WeChat has almost entirely replaced SMS text messages in China, and most voice calls go through WeChat as well. Group chats and group voice conversations are seamless, and trivial to set up ad-hoc.

      Also, WeChat gives you one centralized app to build up Social Credit, which will come in handy if you ever get in trouble with the government.

  3. Tencent by DaMattster · · Score: 2

    Tencent IP addresses also just happen to be the single largest source of brute force SSH attempts on my VPS. Despite reporting this to the email addresses listed in their whois profile, of course, it gets ignored. So any claims of "we don't engage in cyber warfare" coming from China are simply bold-faced lies. You can imagine if Tencent is willing to do this, you know they're harvesting all of the information that they can from your phone and about you. Stop helping the Chinese machine make money.

    1. Re:Tencent by jbmartin6 · · Score: 0

      Stop helping the Chinese machine make money.

      I'd rather help 'the Chinese' than the Americans, who also harvest all of the information they can and prosecute real physical warfare all across the world along with the cyber warfare their government also lies about..

      --
      This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
    2. Re:Tencent by Dripdry · · Score: 1

      I dunno, the Chinese instituted the systematic torture, brutality, starvation and killing of 45 million Chinese peasants in just 4 years (1958-1962). They'd do it again if it were "for the good of China".

      How about we compare some facts and figures before we start automatically thinking China is some kind of savior, ok?

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      -
    3. Re:Tencent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you know how easy it is to spoof IP address? NSA is known to spoof their attack from foreign country address blocks, I would look for other telltale sign other than IP blocks.

    4. Re:Tencent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Stop spreading lies, they had a failed social experiments which caused famine starvation but those numbers you quoted aren't accurate. It was hardly systematic killing, for that you gotta quote the Nazis.

    5. Re:Tencent by jbmartin6 · · Score: 1

      Nobody said anything about China saving anything

      --
      This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
    6. Re:Tencent by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      I dunno, the Chinese instituted the systematic torture, brutality, starvation and killing of 45 million Chinese peasants in just 4 years (1958-1962).

      Most estimates for the death toll from TGLF put it around "only" 30 million.

      There was nothing "systematic" about it. It was gross economic incompetence that caused the famine, not intentional policy.

    7. Re:Tencent by Ryanrule · · Score: 1

      Fuck you china asshole

    8. Re:Tencent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With new 'Emperor Pooh', that may be sooner than everyone thinks...

  4. Lunar New Year? by rossdee · · Score: 1

    So aew there a lot of people on the moon these days?

    I personally celebrate the Persian new year (Naw Ruz) - March 20/21

  5. Trustworthy? by Malc · · Score: 2

    The Chinese government has shutdown all the major foreign competitors to WeChat in China. Perhaps this means WeChat is the only that gave them a backdoor. Or perhaps it's giving them a chance to grow big enough that they can compete with the foreign giants, and then a backdoor can be added later. Why would I install their software on my phone or laptop? This is a country whose police are so tapped in to everything that find anybody within their borders in a matter of minutes using everybody's CCTV and facial recognition from photos everybody has to provide to the government (e.g. national ID or visas).

    To be honest I did use this app a few years ago when I lived in China. But now I'm back in the West there's nobody who uses WeChat, so it went 88 pretty quickly.

    1. Re:Trustworthy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well if you use any services from the US you are certainly no better off.

    2. Re:Trustworthy? by Ryanrule · · Score: 1

      Fuck you china

    3. Re:Trustworthy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Chinese government has shutdown all the major foreign competitors to WeChat in China. Perhaps this means WeChat is the only that gave them a backdoor. ...

      It's more likely that *ALL* WeChat competitors gave full access to their data to the Chinese government, since that is required in China. The reason why WeChat survived is that it is owned by the oligarch(s) who have the best political connections to the Communist Party / Chinese Military / Xi Jinping or whoever holds the most power at the time.

    4. Re:Trustworthy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or it has the most useful features, and the most users. I hear about a billion or so, but what do I know, I only skimmed the summary.

    5. Re: Trustworthy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Only one productâ(TM)s allowed on the market, so your point is irrelevant.

    6. Re: Trustworthy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are completely clueless, so your point is about as irrelevant as it gets. qq.com

  6. WeChat vs WeeChat by TheOuterLinux · · Score: 1

    Anyone else keep mentally doing this when seeing these headlines?

  7. Re:Thank god those folks in Beijing are recording by sycodon · · Score: 1

    "You Chat, We Record"

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.