WeChat infographic, WeChat news, WeChat friends

As expected WeChat has surpassed 100 milion users outside of its home country.

Tencent made the announcement in a press release the company sent to our inbox, along with the Infographic shown above. Over 100 million registered user accounts exist outside China, showing that the app is indeed popular even in the international stage and among growing competition in the messaging space.

Several key initiatives including the WeChat 5.0 upgrade, which moved the app beyond messaging and into the online payment space as well as gaming and stickers, and the global Lionel Messi advertising campaign have piqued the interest of audiences worldwide.

WeChat doubled its registered user account base in the last 3 months, reaching the 100m milestone shortly after an independent survey found that the platform was the fifth most used smartphone app worldwide.

Since its international debut, WeChat has been well received in Asia, quickly becoming the most popular mobile social app in Hong Kong, India, Indonesia and Malaysia across multiple smartphone OS platforms, where the user base has recently gained tremendous growth. In addition to these markets, WeChat gained popularity in other locations around the world, hitting the spot for the most downloaded mobile social app on app stores in Argentina, Brazil, Italy, Mexico, Philippines, Singapore, Spain, South Africa, Thailand and Turkey in July 2013.

“We must thank all our fans for helping us achieving 100 million registered user account milestone in such a short space of time,” said Poshu Yeung, Vice President of the International Business Group at Tencent. “To those people, and to future users, we promise we will continue to bring you innovation, for example we launched the first-of-its-kind voice messaging service ‘Holdto-Talk’ on the app in 2011, and we will continue to develop and enrich our user experience. Whether users want to create text message, share moments, or engage in live audio and video chats, WeChat has made it all available to enjoy securely and for free.”

WeChat has seen a host of artists, sports personalities, celebrities and VIPs join the platform through various advertising campaigns as well as “official accounts” from brands such as McDonald and Nike in Hong Kong.

It’s certainly been an interesting trek so far this year for the app, and it will be interesting as well to see where it goes in the future. If you haven’t already, you can join the over 400 million registered WeChat users yourself by getting the latest version of the app for your favorite OS.

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By Josh Robert Nay

Josh Robert Nay is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TruTower. He has worked in the telecommunications industry since 2003 and specializes in GSM based technology. He also uses (too many) VoIP apps and is a long-time user of BlackBerry, Android, and Windows Phone. He adores anything having to do with space exploration and writing. In addition to the links below, he can be found on LinkedIn and can also be found on his website at http://www.joshrobertnay.com.