MaixunBytes Information Technology has published the first white paper about internet communication management, giving advice about brand building, crisis warnings and content marketing.

According to the report, the number of active users on China's major social media platform, WeChat, surpassed 800 million last year, followed by 700 million on QQ and 300 million on Sina Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter.

Tencent, iQiyi and Youku are three top video websites in China, followed by LeTV and Sohu.

The report noted that live-streaming and short video applications increased last year, reflecting that the age of pictures and words has turned into that of videos.

Kuaishou, China's main short video app, ranked top 20 among social media sites. Inke and YY Live were the two most popular live-streaming apps.

Two major "bullet-screen" video-streaming sites, or sites where individuals can share comments instantly with the audience, Bilibili.com and Acfun.com, whose technology was learnt by other video sites, were still active.

Users of news apps reached 530 million. Competition among different news apps remained fierce, the report said.

Online communities and websites about popularizing knowledge, including Zhihu and Guokr produced many new products to meet the demand of emerging middle classes, the white paper said.

"Community searches, brands and activity rankings attract the most attention," MaixunBytes chief executive officer Zhang Zhigang said.

Zhang said enterprises need to know the demand of targeted customers and establish links with them as soon as possible, while various social platforms provide new channels for companies to get to know and understand their potential clients.

MaixunBytes analyzes data from social media, including page views and sharing frequency to determine hot topics and favored brands.

"Our platform can quickly extract content that customers are interested in and find potential marketing opportunities there," he added.

Chen Zhijie, former general manager of Digital Powerhouse of Shunya Communication Group, said user experience, feedback, as well as discussion of a hot topic on social media, are all useful resources for brands.

Sail Chen, senior analytics manager for Newsroom of Adidas, said the company gained valuable information about its customers when cooperating with stars to do promotion through an analysis of the interactive data of fans on social media.