WeChat has middle-class user base, while Weibo has grass-roots  

(ECNS) -- As two types of social networks in China, WeChat and Weibo differ drastically in terms of their core user base, a bluebook on the country's new media by the China Academy of Social Science said on Wednesday.

With more than 600 million users and more than 270 million active ones, WeChat has helped Tencent claim a healthy chunk of China's middle-class users. The report said 33.7 percent of WeChat users are younger than 24 and 32 percent have a monthly salary of 3,000 to 5,000 yuan ($481 to $801).

Altogether 103 websites offer mini-blogging services in China now, and the number of total Weibo accounts is 1.3 billion. Tencent Weibo reports larger user numbers than Sina Weibo does, but the latter outshines all others in popularity.

However, users of Weibo tend to be less wealthy, as 91.5 percent earn less than 5,000 yuan a month, among whom students account for 25.6 percent.

Although 77.9 percent of Weibo users don't have college degrees, active Weibo accounts usually belong to college graduates.

Weibo is essentially China's Twitter, with richer multimedia functions. Weibo can be thought of as Twitter with elements of Yahoo's Tumblr and Facebook's Instagram, foreign media said.

WeChat is much like Facebook, but it differs in several important respects: It offers heightened privacy, and is used more for communicating among an exclusive friend circle than for broadcasting information.