In brief: Liu Yugou is Deputy Director at Tencent, China’s largest Internet service portal with over 850 million users, and was interviewed by CHINICT President Franck Nazikian.

This is a summary of tweets sent during the interview.

• Tencent is actually the 3rd largest market cap on the Web, after Google and Amazon. Nothing to do with the two!

• If it’s not innovation — what is? Liu lived in the US before.
• Yuguo Liu, rather, not Tuguo Liu — apologies. Started at Microsoft in Seattle.
• Bing, Google, mentioned.
• Tencent is #1 in China, #3 worldwide, re: Internet companies. Over 60% of Tencent staff working in R&D.
• Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen: Tencent’s there in China.
• 1 billion registered user accounts, 500-600+ million user accounts. 100 million online at the same time. Wow.
• QQ.com: largest portal site in China; into online media, news.
• How do you distinguish QQ (#1 in IM, CN) from MSN? Tencent grew over 12 years. 10 years: many small players.
• ICQ. Lots of small IM players about 10 years ago. Can’t monetize solely from IM.
• QQ is pretty much also about young generation dressing up virtual rooms. This really exists in China.
• Which innovation from Tencent could be replicable outside CN, like in the US?
• Look at SNSs in CN: Kaixin001, etc. Facebook in US. There are some differences folks can see.
• Kaixin001 — “Facebook-like” — fastest growing SNS in CN.
• Tencent Research Institute. Liu’s favourite part. 1st research institute in CN (BJ, SH, SZ) for net research.
• Research: cloud computing, multimedia, product development centre within lab, etc.
• Upcoming Tencent products? A big pipeline in terms of products research lab is churning out.
• http://labs.qq.com — this is where new stuff’s coming out from Tencent.
• Where’s QQ 5 years down the line? Look back 5 years ago first.
• In the next 5 years, we’re continuing investment in Spaces, IM; 2 factors, though: provide value for users; continue innovation.
• Tencent filed 2,000+ patents over the past years. Wow that’s a lot.
• International strategy?
• Tencent open look for int’l market; but we need to understand market, user; just trying to get into the market.
• 5 years is still quite a long time as of today; lots of opportunities. Want to serve CN users well.
• Tencent one of the biggest entrepreneur-minded companies (like Google “has” been).
• Tencent at heart, core of entrepreneur system. Liu been with MS.
• For folks watching on @TechCrunch TV or InformationWeek TV: Should I remain in Silicon Valley or go on to China?
• Again, answer is: core is to look for customers. Where’s the value for customers?
• Again, you need guanxi.
• Thank you Liu Yuguo.