Interbrand recently released their 2016 ranking of the Global Top Brands; Apple ranks first with $178,119 million brand value, followed by Google, Coca Cola, Microsoft, and Toyota.

Technology is, not surprisingly, the most dominant sector, with four brands in Top 10: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung. It also features some of the Top Growing Brands, with Facebook (+48%) as the Top Growing Brand in 2016, followed by Adobe (21%), Huawei (18%), Samsung (14%) and SAP (+13%), and number 2 ranked Google at (+11%).

Encouraged by the success of some social networking apps as WeChat, many leading social networks across the world start integrating online commerce capabilities for new areas of revenues.

Combined MAU (monthly active users) of Weixin and WeChat were 600 million, an increase of 37% YoY in Q2 2015, according to Tencent’s unaudited consolidated results for the second quarter of 2015, and the social networking revenue increased 18% YoY to $853 million, major resulted from WeChat commerce.

Among the global social network users, one-third utilized product search as the major driving force of using social media. In June 2015, one-fourth Facebook active users had searched to find products. Social networking users are also enthusiastic online shoppers; two-thirds of Facebook users shopped online; seven-tenths Snapchat users and three-fourths Instagram users also shopped online.

However, so far the social networking purchase feature has not attracted the majority of users. Only one-tenth of active users indicated that such shopping feature increased the possibility of online shopping. Social networking users were used to employ social networking as the early platform of online shopping while completing the whole shopping process on social networks might still be a challenge.

Also read: 12% of Cross-border Online Shopping in China from Shanghai

During the period from June 2013 to June 2014, WeChat usage rate increased by 26%, ranking top among all the popular social platforms worldwide according to research of L2.

Youku’s usage growth rate was 8%, higher than Google Plus. While Facebook, Twitter got no increase in usage, YouTube , Pinterest and Tumblr even had decrease in usage during such period according to L2.

Combined MAU of Weixin and WeChat reached 468 million at the end of the third quarter of 2014, representing growth of 39% YoY. 39% respondents surveyed by GlobalWebIndex used WeChat, making WeChat the most popular messaging app in APAC in the third quarter of 2014.

With growing popularity and maturity of social media, each brand now on average ows 7.5 social media accounts. Adidas is the most active one with 13 social media accounts, followed by Gap, Uniqlo, ASOS, Honda and Toyota which all own 12 accounts. Among the luxury brands, only Burberry, Chanel and Dior got into top 20% by total number of fans and engagement rate.

Top three social media channels were Facebook, Twitter and YouTube by brands’ adoption in June 2014. Sina Weibo and WeChat were in the top 10 list, having surpassed Tumblr and Vine.

It is believed that WeChat’s brand engagement still had gap from top 3 social networks according to research of L2. The data shows 20% brands valued stickiness delivered on WeChat. The major difference of WeChat’s digital marketing from Facebook and YouTube was its interactivity. WeChat’s two-way following and personal information confidentiality can realize higher reach rate and efficiency.

Take Louis Vuitton as an example, it promotes “one-for-one” service on WeChat official account to stimulate purchase need. While Cartier utilized LBS (location based service) to offer information about the nearest stores such as address, map, contact and navigation on WeChat official account.

When Burberry was to launch its autumn & winterseries, it provided exclusive custom-made nameplate service.

Besides, WeChat provides payment, LBS, member service, product demonstration, voice chat, real-time chatting and other features. Especially for beauty brands, WeChat’s product display and member services can bring much attention and “likes” for them.

Also read: 11 Charts to Show How Companies Use Wechat Official Accounts

Deputy general manager of Weibo Zenghui Cao confirmed a Weibo account to be from Facebook today though it’s not a verified enterprise Weibo account:

A Weibo account claiming to be Facebook’s official Weibo account published its first post on 29 August 2014; this account is a regular Weibo account with membership privilege, unlike other companies verified enterprise account with blue “V” icon.

This account has published 5 posts with 15,762 Weibo followers at the time of publishing this post. After Mr. Cao’s confirmation, we can expect a huge increase of Facebook followers on Weibo.

10 Charts to Tell You Almost Everything About Alibaba Group: China’s E-commerce Empire

An astonishing info found out by BI Intelligence that Facebook had 95 million users in China (under 100 million in America), although Facebook was and still is blocked by China Great Firewall. Besides, Google+ had 100 million users in China, Twitter had 80 million and Youtube had 60 million users in China. Linkedin is the only unblocked big social network in China, which had 20 million users.

Other interesting findings by BI Intelligence was Qzone owned by Tencent had 712 million users, ranking the third in the world. It was twice of WhatsApp and three times of Twitter’s users.

The top three chat app were: WhatsApp, Line, and Wechat.

According to Hitwise data, Weibo is playing a more important role to e-commerce websites in China, compared to Facebook and Twitter.

A total of 6.5% Sina Weibo users visit e-commerce websites after visiting Weibo including daily deal sites, C2C websites (like Taobao) and B2C Websites (like 360buy.com).