Tencent Weibo in March, Qoocu.com (a blog focusing on products of Tencent) released some screenshots of the internal beta test of Tencent Weibo. On April 1, Tencent began its public beta test, people with an invitation code might take part in the test. And on the same day, Tencent released its QQ2010 version Beta3, with the microblogging feature included. In the second quarter of 2012 it had 469 million registered users. On July 23, 2014, Tencent Inc announced that it will integrate its micro-blogging service's operation team into the company's news team, after media reported that it has dismissed its micro-blogging department
Mass surveillance in China Weibo. At the beginning of 2018, Ma Huateng, chairman and CEO of Tencent, said that WeChat's MAU(monthly active users) across the globe reached a billion for the first time. Since Tencent has good cooperation with the central government to implement self-censorship and mass surveillance, it enjoys the dominance in China. Other messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, messenger, Line, etc, are mostly blocked or even forced out of the Chinese market. Chinese Internet users have several ways to circumvent censorship. Netizens generally rely on VPN, i.e.“Virtual Private Networks”, to get access to those blocked websites and messaging apps. However, in July