Growing popularity of WeChat in China is evident from the fact that more than 10 million messages were sent in a single minute on the eve of Chinese New Year.
The information comes from the statistics revealed by the WeChat team through an infographic [attached below]. Though the specific span of time when 10 million messages were processed was not revealed by the team, it was noted that that activity peaked between 10PM to 12AM.
Number of messages sent on this Chinese New Year’s Eve is almost double the number of messages sent last year claims WeChat. The messaging service claims to have more than 500 million registered users in China alone, with 270 million monthly active worldwide users.
On the other hand, figures released by Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter-like service, revealed that it processed 863,000 tweets within a single minute on the same day.
As per WeChat statistics, the most active region on the New Year’s Eve in China was Beijing followed by Guangdong, Zhejiang, Liaoning, and Jiangsu provinces. Total user activity in these regions accounted for 42 percent of the messaging app’s global activity.
The messaging service also noticed a significant increase in the number of video messages it processed, owing all the credit to the “quiet arrival” of 4G in China.
In an attempt to encourage users to bind their bank cards to the app, parent company, Tencent, also introduced a special gifting scheme coded ‘red envelope scheme’, in which users can send a lump sum of money to a group of friends, which is then distributed randomly. The WeChat team is yet to disclose the red envelope scheme figures.
[Source: TechInAsia]
