Chinese Internet company Tencent announced that its WeChat service has gained over 50 million registered users.

Specially designed for overseas users, WeChat has expanded into Hong Kong, Macau, Thailand, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Mexico and the Middle East countries. It has become one of the most downloaded social apps on the Apple App Store and Google Play platforms of these countries and regions.

Targeting the overseas markets, Tencent’s WeChat tailored popular activities for local users to realize fast localization in international markets. It made different versions of advertising in different countries and regions, including Thailand, India, Malaysia, Singapore, and Mexico, by inviting local stars and celebrities to join WeChat. These promotional activities helped the localization and user growth of WeChat.

To enhance its overseas marketing, WeChat continued to cooperate with various companies. For example, McDonald’s, KFC, and Thailand’s well-known beverage brand Chang have opened official accounts on WeChat, which help those companies to maintain communications with customers.

Ma Huateng, chairman and chief executive officer of Tencent, said that WeChat realizes the combination of communications, social media and stable Internet platform — WeChat has an innovative open platform, business model, and friendly community.

So far, WeChat has supported most of the mainstream mobile operating system platforms and 18 different languages, including English, Spanish, Russian, Indonesian, Portuguese and Thai.