The Chinese website that’s grown bigger than Facebook

CHINA’S social media platform Tencent has become bigger than its more famous US rival Facebook.

It is the first firm in China to surpass the $500bn valuation mark and in the process overtook Mark Zuckerberg’s site.

An unfamiliar name in the west, Tencent Holdings owns China’s hit messaging app WeChat which has 600m monthly active users who send a whopping 38bn messages every day.

The group’s share price shot up after reports it was close to making Malaysia its first overseas market with the launch of the WeChat Pay service.

The move is expected to ramp up competition between Tencent and Alibaba Group as they race to seek new opportunities outside China.

‘Malaysia is actually quite large in the sense that we have 20m WeChat users, huge potential, and the market is quite warm towards internet products from China,’ Tencent’s senior vice president Seng Yee Lau said.

Tencent has a market value of £391bn, ahead of Facebook at £387bn, placing it in fifth place of the world’s most valuable corporations behind Apple, Google owner Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon.

Tencent’s value has also pushed the firm’s founder Ma Huateng into ninth place of Forbes’ list of world’s top billionaires. Ma, who is also known as Pony Ma because his surname is Chinese for horse, is richer than Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and is the first Chinese billionaire to enter Forbes’ list.

‘Tencent’s high growth, as demonstrated by its quarterly results, has supported the rally in its shares,’ said Steven Leung, sales director at Singaporebased investment bank UOB Kay Hian.

‘Since the company has been able to deliver with its earnings, the stock is still worth holding onto despite its current high level,’ he said.

Tencent is also Asia’s most valuable company, ahead of Alibaba and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics. Although the firm dominates the social media and messaging space in China, its most recent results showed that its earnings were boosted by an 84pc revenue rise from hugely popular smartphone games.

Its biggest game, fantasy roleplayer Honour Of Kings, racks up as many as 50m daily users.

Tencent is hoping to replicate the popularity of Honour Of Kings with American gamers, with plans to bring it to the US. However, critics in China have criticised the game for being too addictive.

In 2016, Tencent bought a majority stake in Supercell, the Finnish maker of mobile game Clash Of Clans, from Japan’s Softbank Group for £6.5bn.

The company also has stakes in Snapchat owner Snap, ridesharing app Lyft and electricvehicle maker Tesla.

Earlier this month Facebook founder Zuckerberg warned that its profitability would be damaged after it was forced to boost its investment in security after the platform was subject to abuse by russian hackers.

‘Our community continues to grow and our business is doing well,’ Zuckerberg said at the time. ‘But none of that matters if our services are used in ways that don’t bring people closer together.’

reporting its results for the third quarter of 2017, Facebook said costs were likely to rise by between 45pc and 60pc next year, slowing revenue growth and dealing a blow to its margin. revenue at the social network totalled £7.8bn in the third quarter rising by 47pc on the same period a year earlier.

The firm’s UK operations have faced criticism for the seemingly low rate of corporation tax paid despite soaring profits and revenues.