Tencent is embarrassing Facebook,

Tencent is embarrassing Facebook, Zynga, and AOL with its success.

Image: Familymwr via flickr

You don't hear too much about Tencent relative to its size, but it's the third biggest publicly traded internet company in the world, bigger than eBay or Yahoo.
Tencent started out as an instant messaging service called QQ, and now it's the biggest social network in China. It makes money not just from advertising but from sales of virtual goods and social games. Meanwhile the biggest internet companies in those sectors, Facebook and Zynga, are nowhere in China.
(We should also note that Tencent did something AOL couldn't -- make a business out of instant messaging.)