Instant Messaging is big business. While Facebook's Messenger and WhatsApp tend to dominate the headlines, they're often outpaced by the plucky WeChat.

Read on to learn more about the Chinese messaging service.

Chatterbox

WeChat lets users send video and text messages privately or to groups. It was first launched in January 2011 by Chinese development company Tencent.

Listen up

WeChat now has over 1.1 billion accounts, that's close to Facebook's user base. 

Most of these users are based in China, with just 100 million users worldwide.

Sending a message

The WeChat community is extremely engaged, with the service seeing over 549 million monthly active users.

This makes it the largest standalone message app for monthly users.

While the average users spends a mammoth 40 minutes WeChatting every day.

Demographic break down

WeChat is reasonably male-centric, having 65% of male users vs 35% female.

WeChatters tend to be a sprightly bunch too, with 85% aged between 18 – 36.

Business cred

WeChat is fairly cautious about how much promoted content gets through.

At present brands must have 100,000 followers before they can advertise on the service.