Wechat and Weibo are the social media giants most used in China. Each has more than a half-billion active users. Now China has specialized social networks for all kind of users and groups. The internet users in China want to feel really connected and have fun using all these new apps. These apps are not designed to replace WeChat or Weibo. However, there are several WeChat alternatives that offer features like video chat, voice messages, and screen sharing. Some of the services these new social media apps used in China provide can be integrated into WeChat or Weibo functionalities. The idea is that they are useful because they are community-based on a specific field. We can find social media focused on moms, gamers, photos, food or even fashion. The apps do one thing and excel in this field.
Key Takeaways
✅ These apps sit alongside WeChat and Weibo as single-purpose communities. Each one targets one audience, such as singles, gamers, women tracking their health, or fashion shoppers, and concentrates on serving that audience well.
✅ Tantan and Momo are the dating-first entries. Tantan copies Tinder’s swipe model. Momo added interest groups, check-ins, casual games and video calls to keep users around once the novelty of a dating app wears off.
✅ MeetYou grew from a single utility into a full network. It started as a period tracker and became a health and lifestyle community for women, with users talking about everything from fitness and weight loss to relationships and travel.
✅ Laiwang came closest to a full WeChat alternative. It shifted from instant messaging to themed interest groups and carried the broadest feature set of any app covered here.
✅ The right community can matter more than raw reach. A niche app full of your buyers just might do more for a brand than a much larger platform where nobody talks about its category. The same move toward smaller communities shows up in social media trends well beyond China.
Tantan
It’s the most popular dating network in China. They received US$5M in series A funding, and this copycat of Tinder will get more popular this year. People who are familiar with the Western dating app Tinder will recognize that’s a COPY of the site. Set up a photo profile and search for single people in your area. If you don’t like the person you see, swipe left and move on to the next person’s photo. Tinder has been blocked in China as a dangerous app, so this local copycat has free access to the market.
Active Monthly Users: 14 Million
MeetYou
MeetYou was designed to track menstruation. But it evolved into something more social with more functionalities. It’s now health and lifestyle-oriented social media for women of different ages. It still has the period-tracking feature and has added other features like health diary. You’ll find active users related to health, weight loss, clothing, fitness, relationships and travel on this app.
Total Users (2023): Over 300 Million
Laiwang
Laiwang is the only app on this list that could completely replace WeChat or Weibo. It has all the functionality of the other apps. Laiwang was created by Alibaba as it’s messaging app, but after a large update, it’s not emphasizing messaging anymore and is putting all the focus on themed groups. Laiwang allows users to create groups for themed discussions. It also ensures privacy and security with end-to-end encryption.
“Laiwang has changed its main focus from being an instant messaging app to providing more focused social networking services. It enables users not to only keep in touch with the friends that they already know, but also find more people who share the same interests and interact with them,” explained an Alibaba representative to TechinAsia.
Now it is a specialized, community-based social network that could be used with a WeChat marketing campaign and Weibo. Very few people that use Laiwang can explain the purpose of the app. Which makes it tough to use it purely for messaging. However, Laiwang handles group chat well for both professional and social interactions, and that professional side is why Chinese social platforms have become a recruiting channel as much as a marketing one. If that is your reason for being here, see how companies approach hiring in China using WeChat and other Chinese social media. The e-commerce titan hasn’t revealed the user numbers for Laiwang.
Total Users: 10 Million
Momo
Momo launched in August 2011 as a location-based social app. In August 2012 it raised a $40 million Series B from Alibaba Group, DST and Matrix Partners. According to Statista, Momo was still the most popular dating app in China in May 2025, and it belongs to Hello Group, the same company that owns Tantan.
But Momo is not just a chatting and hook-ups app. It has evolved to include theme-based interest groups and added Foursquare-style check-ins. This feature makes the app even more social, and makes users stay longer after the initial curiosity of simply testing out a dating app. The app also moved into social gaming in order to diversify its services. There are now several Momo-branded casual games that integrate with the social network part of the app. Momo also facilitates group calls, enhancing its communication features. It followed the example of the giant social networks Facebook and WeChat recently, emphasizing its video call features.
Paying Users (Q2 2026): 3.9 Million
Pengpeng
Pengpeng, an onomatopoeic name like “pew pew”, is one of the weirdest social networks in China. It’s a mobile social gaming app that also includes dating features. The concept here is to use games to break the ice and create some new relationships. Among its many games, quizzes and personality tests. The results of which form a part of the big data used to match the users. Most of Pengpeng’s games are self-developed, but it has also opened it’sAPI to other developers. The startup says it has 300,000 daily users in just 2 months after its launch.
Total Users: 4 Million
Pinco
Pinco is a photo app and social circle for selfies, and displaying the things you own. It seems like Instagram, but it involves showing off. You take a photo, add filters, and then tag the brands and products like your MacBook computer, Starbucks coffee, Guess bag, Calvin Klein T-shirt, etc. The user created tagged photos can also be shared on other social media apps like Weibo or WeChat. This app is designed for fashion-addicts and following the latest trends in fashion. XiaoHongShu, also called the Little Red Book, adds a store to this kind of product-tagged photo sharing. Users post photos and reviews of what they bought, and they can buy from brand stores inside the app. It sits next to WeChat, Zhihu, Douyin and Toutiao in this rundown of the five Chinese platforms worth building a brand strategy around.
PaPa
This app appeared with a feature that initially looked like a gimmick (the users can attach a vocal message to photos). But it turned out that people like the idea. Users can also send voice notes in individual or group chats.
Total Users (May 2013): 10 Million
Frequently Asked Questions About Chinese Social Media Apps
None of the apps in this roundup was designed as a full replacement, since each one serves a single community. Laiwang came closest after it shifted from messaging toward themed interest groups, which gave it the broadest feature set of the seven apps covered here.
Far bigger than any app on this list. Tencent reported 1.439 billion combined monthly active users for Weixin and WeChat as of June 30, 2026. The largest figure in this roundup, MeetYou’s 300 million users, is about a fifth of that.
Run them alongside a WeChat and Weibo presence, since none of them was built to replace either platform. Pick the app whose community matches your product. Pinco suits fashion and lifestyle brands because its users tag brands in their photos, and MeetYou suits women’s health and wellness products.
The LinkedIn Playbook for Real Business Growth
My latest book helps professionals, entrepreneurs, and business owners turn LinkedIn from a static profile into a real source of clients and growth.
Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth gives you clear, practical steps to build a profile that gets noticed and a network that actually sends business your way.
Grab your copy on Amazon and put it to work this week. Click the cover or the button below to get started.
Not all of them. The figure under each app comes from a different source and year, some as far back as 2013. Check each company’s latest disclosure before you plan a budget around any one of these apps.
WeChat Alternative Social Media Apps Used in China Conclusion:
Chinese Social Networks are becoming more targeted. Weibo and Wechat may lose market share in the future because Chinese users may find more communities, like these new social media apps used in China, that can answer to their needs. That said, Weibo still reaches 605 million people a month, and my guide to Weibo advertising explains the ad formats and targeting options that keep it worth a budget line even as attention fragments across these niche apps.
Really Great article about Chinese Social networks. The best one I read until now.
First one did not put Renren, the old Facebook that nobody use.
and Qzone, totally not a social networks actually