At World Internet Conference Pony Ma says official accounts have 2.3 billion combined followers

Speaking at the fifth World Internet Conference in Wuzhen today, Tencent Pony Ma, founder, CEO, and chairman of Tencent, said media is increasingly mobile, social, and intelligent (in Chinese).

Readers’ behavior is irreversibly moving to mobile and social media. According to Ma, over the past few years, digital platforms have continued launching personalized recommendations, content aggregation channels, and platforms, and their pool of users has grown at an exponential pace.

Social media platforms have become more user-centered and have emphasized on user interactions and the variety of content shared across their network. Social media is an effective addition to communicating mainstream and public opinions, Ma said.

Through establishing seamless links between users, social network, payment features, and other elements, Ma believes that WeChat was able to deepen the integration of “content” and “channels”.

During his speech, Ma announced that WeChat official accounts operated by media have amassed a combined following of 2.3 billion, which he said is an indication that mainstream media have successfully undergone a transformation by leveraging of WeChat official account platform.

“This is merely the beginning of the evolution and revolution of media,” Ma said, “big data and cloud computing, along with other cutting-edge technologies will help push ahead the digital revolution of media.”

China’s most used messaging app WeChat has over one billion monthly active users as of March. The messaging app has become arguably the most powerful apps in China.

Tencent also revealed at today’s conference that ads on WeChat Moment, another popular feature on the messaging app, have hit accumulative ad impression of 52 million times (in Chinese) with a reach of 22 million users.

During his speech at yesterday’s event, Ma announced that there are now one million mini-programs on WeChat and around 200 million users actively use mini-programs every day.