China’s Tencent (700.HK), which operates the instant messaging service QQ, is planning to offer users third-party applications and websites similar to some features of Facebook, the Financial Times reported. Tencent has focused on selling a variety of products such as online games and virtual goods to its more than 600 million QQ users. At present, Tencent is testing about 10 third-party applications to run on QZone, its social network, and Tenpay, its online payment platform. In addition, it is testing a number of external websites that users could link to in the way Facebook members can link to other sites with the "like" function. Tencent would share revenues generated by the third-party applications with developers. The company also hopes to generate a new revenue source from a system of targeted ads – a strategy that Facebook has also employed.
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