Like many applications developed by Tencent, it started as an imitation of the instant voice messenger Kik. WeChat also made knock-offs of other popular apps, such as image-sharing Instagram, random friend-finder Four Square, and personal social network Path.

The number of users keeps increasing and reached 100 million in March 2012. Tencent CEO Pony Ma announced on Sept 17, 2012 that WeChat had 200 million users. There are now more than 300 million.

That's more than half of the 424 million users of Sina Weibo, China's most popular micro-blogging service.

Since August, WeChat has opened public accounts, and many celebrities, media and enterprises started to join the platform, to share information — voice, photo and video messages — with netizens.

Party chief Xi Jinping took a special interest in WeChat, when he visited Tencent's headquarters in Guangdong province in December. He encouraged the company to keep up its development and make a contribution to bringing China's Internet industry to the world, according to First Financial Daily.

Virtual celebrities

In 2011, netizens were crazy about the Zen master cat Shironeko and the dog Shunsuke from Japan, both were well-known for being cute. One year later, however, it seems it's much easier to become famous online, dead or alive.

Yuanfang from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) became the new Internet favorite in October.

In the TV series Amazing Detective Di Renjie, Di, the Chinese version of Sherlock Holmes, often asks his Watson-like assistant Li Yuanfang for advice, "Yuanfang, what do you think of it?" The sentence soon became popular cyberslang. Chinese netizens have taken to using the phrase in everyday discussion.

Playing basketball, holding a machine gun and riding a motorcycle, Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu (712-770) is the busiest literary celebrity of the year. Netizens are obsessed with superimposing his likeness onto photos in high school textbooks.

Employees work in the distribution center of a Chinese e-commerce company sending out goods purchased during the shopping spree on Singles Day, Nov 11, 2012. LONG WEI / FOR CHINA DAILY