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China’s Tencent to launch social games in US

Chinese social media company Tencent is quietly rolling out an English version of its Weibo microblogging platform in the US and plans to launch online social games on Facebook.

Tencent America, a division of Tencent Holdings, is reportedly staffing its office with people in order to bring new online social games to the North American market, with a particular focus on Facebook.

Tencent owns a range of internet services in China including its instant messaging service QQ Messenger, which led to the launch of QQ Games.

As of September 2011, Tencent reported that it had 711.7 million active QQ IM users and in November 2011 Tencent Weibo had 50 million active users.

In July, Tencent agreed a partnership with Zynga to bring CityVille to the Chinese market, on an alternative platform to Facebook, which is blocked in mainland China. Early last year, Tencent acquired a majority stake in online video game developer and publisher Riot Games.

Jenni Baker, London