In June 2014, mobile Internet users exceeded 530 million, accounting for 83.4% of the total Internet users in China. More than 60% of China mobile users are using mobile social apps nowadays, which are indispensable mobile apps in China according to Nielsen.

Location based service (LBS) on mobile device provides much convenience in China’s O2O market. Strong social needs and LBS’s power stimulate interest-based social networking’s development in O2O market.

Over 90% of mobile social app users are using mobile social apps every day with an average of 1.5 hours per day. And over 70% use social apps during their leisure time. The peak usage period is between 8pm and 11pm as well as between 12pm and 1pm.

Location-based services (LBS) are a general class of computer program-level services that use location data to control features. Most mobile social apps in China have such features which can make social networking more convenient and popular for China mobile internet users.

China mobile Internet users use social apps to make friends who share the same interests. With LBS, they can be in touch online or offline. Popular social apps in China include Wechat, Momo, Weibo, Douban, which are easy to build interest- based social network to conduct offline events.

Total number of Weibo (Sina Weibo) mobile app’s active users was 67.53 million in August 2014, down by 10.95% according to Chinese research company EnfoDesk.

Momo users are the most enthusiastic ones about social events in China’s O2O Market and more than half Momo users often take part in online and offline social events for interest. Momo recently launched ad platform for retailer taking ride of this trend.

Also read: China’s Top Mobile Social Apps by Time Usage

Momo, one of China’s popular mobile social networking app, launched its advertising platform for off-line retailers.

Momo, founded in March 2011 by Tang Yan, Zhang Sichuan, Lei Xiaoliang and Li Zhiwei (most of whom are veterans of NetEase, and is based in Beijing), is a free location-based services instant messaging application for smartphones; it’s popular for making friends with nearby strangers.

Users, once launching the app, are able to see nearby strangers filtered by distance which will also be shown. As such, the offline retail businesses can definitely utilize the app to attract nearby traffic to their store especially if their store mainly target post-90s group.

The retailers don’t even need to know how to use a computer as they can complete the ad buying on their smartphone. It costs from RMB 10 cents for each reached user; Momo will estimate the total number of reached users and charge accordingly after retailers specify the geographic range and time period for the ad placement.

By end Jun 2014, Momo’s total number of registered users reached 148 million; with 52.43 million monthly active users.