Earlier this month, Chinese social network Qzone released internal statistics showing that it had more than 200 million monthly active users in January. What has been the site’s secret to growth - these numbers put it in the running for the title of largest social network in the world, facing international competitors like Facebook and MySpace. A China-based VentureBeat reader has an intriguing explanation of how its QQ instant message desktop client is making it a success.

First, some numbers. Tencent is one of the main Chinese portal sites, and QQ, is also huge. While third-party estimates put China’s total internet population at around 250 million users, QQ has 350 million active users. The 100 million difference is explained by individuals and companies having more than one IM identity each. As Tencent mentioned in the release, up to 50 million people are using QQ at any given time.