Tencent, China’s largest Internet portal mostly known to us for its hugely popular instant messenger product QQ, published an updated report on the user numbers of its social networking service QZone last week. The report was only available in Chinese, but the folks over at Web2Asia were kind enough to translate it.
And if the self-reported numbers are not too much of an exaggeration, they’re nothing short of mind-blowing.
Even taken with a healthy grain of salt, the stats Tencent are presenting deserve a mention: the report claims more than 200 million people were using QZone as of January 31, 2009, surpassing international players like Facebook (which recently announced 175 million registered users) and MySpace.
For the sake of comparison, we took a look at the worldwide comScore stats for the aforementioned social networking services, but they only give you an overview of visitor numbers for QQ.com instead of QZone separately (which has its own subdomain). To be frank, we don’t even know if the comparison flies because we’re not sure where QQ the communication (IM) service ends and where QZone the social network begins.
Going back to Tencent’s report, it states that about 150 million out of the total 200 million are actively contributing on Qzone by posting blogs, sharing photos, and interacting with other users. In Qzone, about 4 million users are supposedly uploading an average of 60 million photos every day. Furthermore, on February 9 the company’s instant messenger QQ reportedly recorded more than 50 million concurrent users.
The numbers are so impressive that we dug a little deeper, stumbling upon a report on DataCenterKnowledge which also wonders if QZone is bigger than Facebook globally or not. The article points to Netcraft’s latest monthly web server survey, which this month started including the Qzone blogging service. Netcraft: “this month’s inclusion instantly makes the company the largest blog site provider in the survey, surpassing the likes of Windows Live Spaces, Blogger and MySpace.” Facebook is under-reported here because Netcraft’s survey doesn’t capture all the activity at social networks and instead zooms in on sites rather than users.
Furthermore, QQ has more social networking services targeting various markets besides QZone. QQ Xiaoyou, a service targeting students in universities and high schools, has over 20 million registered users and it only officially launched in January, 2009 (it’s been in private test mode since June 2008).
If QQ doesn’t operate the world’s largest social networking sites already, it will soon.
If you sell an umbrella to 1% of all Chinese on QQ.com …
People have absolutely no idea what is happening in India and China.
The scale of activity and business in China and India are truly mind boggling, and they make many of the US startups seem somewhat trivial in terms of their revenues.
As the old saying goes, follow the money. And the ipcentre of the global economy is shifting to Asia.
There is a massive, silent revolution going on in India and China right now, and I truly believe that the Silicon Valley of the 21st Century will be located in Delhi or Bangalore instead of Palo Alto.
I wrote a very extended post on this very topic of Why India Will Replace Silicon Valley in the 21st Century.
http://smartbab...-valley_22.html
Anjali Sen
Apologies for the typo:
“And the epicentre of the global economy is shifting to Asia.”
http://smartbab...xy.blogspot.com
Do you have techcrunch set to refresh every minute? I see your comments appearing among the first, if not first, on many posts on TC.
Step away from the computer. Check out the real world.
I was about to appreciate this neologism : IPcentre…
Too bad,
pls stop spamming every TC post…
I agree with you except your comment about revenue, you need a lot clicks in these developing markets where many of the users monthly income is less than $300 USD.
If you are not a local entrepreneurial company and using Adsense, yes.
But if you are a local entrepreneur who knows how to make money in these markets, they are tremendously profitable.
In 2007, QQ had revenues of $523 million and an astonishing operating profit of $224 million.
The 2008 numbers are not out yet, but analysts estimate almost $800 million in sales and operating profit of $400 million.
In other words, it would take Digg 50 years to generate the same amount of revenue QQ generated just last year.
Yes, the IPcentre and epicentre of the global economy is shifting to Asia … and I believe the next Silicon Valley will be in Delhi or Shanghai.
http://smartbab...xy.blogspot.com
yeah but which american/european developer will work 14hours/day 7days a week for 250 euro a month??
pls stop spamming every TC post, that too at top…
China!!! Nunca Houvi falar de nenhum site social na china. Bom mais como tudo na vida tem sua primeira vez!!!
Valeu pela dica, e realmente este site é ( The Best )
Congratulations…
Marcio Rocon
Brazil
http://imagensmix.com
I totally agree that in terms number of online users, the QZone will take over Facebook as the most popular social networking site in months, not in years. But in terms of revenue, it will be a much longer time for sites in China to catch up in the states. These Google ads CPC is very low and very irrelevant due to the low ads inventory.
Have you guys heard about Kaixin001.com? If not, check it out.
QQ is not an advertising play. They figured out a lot time ago that having a business model dependent on banner ads is not the way to go.
Only 15% of QQ’s revenues are from Ads.
Compare this to the typical Web 2.0 startup usually featured on Techcrunch which generates all of its revenues from VCs and perhaps a few thousand dollars per year from Adsense.
Or compare this to sites like twitter or meebo whose business model I still have not been able to figure out.
Anjali Sen
This is an amazing comment, so spot on! love it
i wonder who is caching the money … is it passed over to the employees? i think that’s the big difference …
here is the URL
http://www.kaixin001.com
The alexa data shows its average pageview is 45. It is a very sticky community.
I’m confused about the Graph here… looks like QQ just hit a plateau? or is the Red line supposed to be qq?
QQ makes you pay to play some of its online games (like board games and card games almost like yahoo games) you buy points to play last time i checked. Also, you can pay to buy virtual gifts for your “character/avatar” to dress it up. You will not believe some of the prices they are paying. But yeah.. totally different business model.
Last time I checked, Qzone only works in IE. and QQ is a really buggy software they ripped from original ICQ i heard.
seems like QQ is always under the radar but it is huge in China.
It’s been mentioned here before: microtransactions.
Note:Now QZone can works in Firefox.
IMO, if QQ continue to build crap software, people will move away eventually. They could easily be the AOL of china if they don’t fix their software and websites.
Success is not just about a better Product. For starters, consider the other Ps.
Things are different in China. Can you imagine a great portion of active Q-zone users are Netizens without their own computers?
My elder brother, 28 years old, uploaded the first photo of his newborn son to Q-zone through his cellphone with GPRS connection in a remote village. And this is how I, a collage student in a coastal city, got to see the first pics of my nephew and feel the emotion of a first day father through the short blogs worked out on non-qwerty cell phone.
That’s amazing but an exact example describes how Tencent is dominating China’s “online informative life”.
I’m agree with you ,QQ is a wonderful tool for China.
What’s with all the chinky QQ shill jobs posting positive comments about this story?
Too many Ads
Tencent’s market is still limited to China, but this is a huge market.
International companies just believe that they can enter this market after it is getting mature. They are wrong. When a local company grows, their chance is getting tiny.
Yeah. If they come first, they are ripped off immediately and their chances are slim.
Make choices, people! 
i just feel funny saw some the comments posted by others…if tencent or anyone can succeed in chinese market, who cares the rest of the world? why has to be english or anything? they’ve got the biggest population, what does it mean?
It’s not whether they are biggest or not in the no. of members, the fact is they are making much more money than facebook or myspace.
Tempting. Should I move back to China?
Yup, China has the biggest community.
QQ is indeed a legend of online success in china, the main reason for its success is being a instant chatting tool it became part of the life on most of the net citizen in china, when a product became a part of your life the producer can do many things.
@edmund: The number matters, in china people still not very active in online shopping, average spending on the net is quite low, the is the per click income for the publisher still publisher can make great money because number of clicks is huge.
Ignoring China would be a big mistake, but learning Chinese is a monumental task. No doubt about its explosion and potential – money question is how?
I live in China and I will tell you, QQ is not going anywhere. Every living person in China with a computer uses QQ. Some use MSN, but not as many as QQ. QQ has a squeeze on the market also because people play games with friends online through that platform. I believe it is the biggest social network in the world, hands down.
with an annoying but non-replacable revenue mode and fully-integrated services from IM to social networking to photosharing to portal to internet tv to gaming, QQ is everywhere. imagining facebook IM installed on every computer of US and integrated with it’s other services-if it have.
I’m a Chinese from China. QQ is absolutely a biggest social portal in China. But most of social sites there are just the copies of out of China. Like kaixin001.com, just a copy of facebook.
When people begin to use QQ,they wouldn’t want to use other communication tools like MSN etc.FYI,normally people use QQ to keep contact with their friends and families,but MSN,on the other hand, is to deal with their work.Aslo,one person can obtain more than one QQ account,but if you dont use them quite often,they would be expired by itself eventually.
I totally agree that in terms number of online users, the QZone will take over Facebook as the most popular social networking site in months, not in years. But in terms of revenue, it will be a much longer time for sites in China to catch up in the states.
Wayne,
I think you have it COMPLETELY backwards in this case. QQ is ALREADY way AHEAD of Facebook in terms of Revenue, and a FULL generation ahead of Facebook in Profits.
Fact: QQ makes several times more PROFIT than Facebook makes in REVENUES!
When you are in Silicon Valley, it is easy to think that Sand Hill Road is the centre of the world, but in fact, the epicentre of the global economy has shifted. Indeed, many Chinese entrepreneurs do not care about the US market any more.
If you take the top 10% of the population of India and China … you get a populations which is larger than ALL of the US or ALL of Europe.
Anjali Sen
http://smartbab...xy.blogspot.com
Tencent has infiltrated each field and each ages of people base on her core application QQ! Just like online entertainment and gaming, blog-QZone, SNS-xiaoyou, leisure activities-QQ Music,Ecommerce -paipai.com and tenpay.com (similar to Paypal)…..OMG,It’s terrible…
Regarding revenues:
The 4th quarter results from Tencent are not published yet, but
1. the company is expected to reach 1 Billion USD (!) in revenues for 2008
2. operating profit is excepted to be around 500 Million USD (!)
In 2007 the company already made 523 Million USD and you can check out the results of the 3rd quarter in 2008 here: http://www.tenc...ts/20081112.pdf
Beat this
it seems good!!!
“profit is expected” sorry
I still believe Facebook is growing strong. QZone totally has a different concept. It would be a while before QZone catches up with Facebook.
Qzone is nothing more than a blog… it’s kinda like live spaces, had been added some interative elements, and claim to be a social networking site.
btw, qq.com is like yahoo.com. with news.
Let’s get together Facebook and MySpace!
Someone mentioned India, in India Orkut is still the biggest, although Bigadda claims to have 2 million people. I am still to meet someone using Bigadda, hence my data is based on a mkt survey if one
Other social network in India and tried and given up, like minglebox which got 8 million from sequioa, and now have morphed into sometype of educational portal, and others like guruji, and search engine, is actually trying to become social. The problem in India is that no one has realised that social networks need to be built around a need, i.e people become friends over a common link, rather than just adding and chatting to people.
Someone I guess needs to build a cracking social network around cricket in India, or maybe even religion.
Iqbal
Go TO Buy Stocks of Tencent ,Friends….HK.0700
Online Game of Tencent is more Valuable in Our China
Orkut is competing with this one in terms of no. of users…. its wide spread in India.
Yes, Orkut is the main one in India, but Google still has not found a way to make money with it.
From India
Anjali Sen
wow, qzone is huge
When I was in China just before the olympics a few people there said they were using QQ but I think it’s a lot more popular now than then, just a year ago. I heard as it’s been growing there have been the usual, especially in china, security issues. This site covers digital security issues really well though.
That’s the first thing that came into my mind as I was reading this post and thread…
At the sheer size of QQ, what are the security risks?
Thanks for the link H.K. I’ll check it out.
Very interesting article.
This week My Music Ticket will launch and that will be the only Social network where people actually can make money and even use it as a tool to promote up to 50 pages (business opportunities) and get paid for every pageview, blog, music download, games palyes AND share in the company’s revenue. I think this is the new generation of social networks. Facebook alone generated a billion dollars in revenue last year and is on its way to 2 billion this year. It’s nice to get a piece of the pie and having fun