Guinness World Records, the global authority on record breaking achievement, today announced it is to accept claims for the first time from leading Chinese language social media and communications platforms.

Verified and accepted Guinness World Records titles will include “Most followers” and “Most simultaneous users”.

Speaking in Beijing, GWR Greater China President Rowan Simons said: “Extending record breaking into China’s thriving social media space has been a priority since we opened our office here in 2012 and we have now established the official Guidelines for verifying records on the top Chinese platforms. We expect the first new record announcements to come in the coming weeks”.

The PRC holds already the Guinness World Records title for “Most internet users (country)” and, by the end of 2013, the country had 618 million netizens, representing 45.8% of the total population. The leading China-based social media platforms to be verified by Guinness World Records include QQ (IM), (Sina) Weibo and Baidu Tieba.

Simons continued, “Internationally, GWR already recognizes records on several social media platforms, but this is the first time we are looking at players predominantly serving the Chinese language market. We are talking about truly massive social networks that use humanity’s most common language to link almost a quarter of all internet users, so we are excited to recognize the groups and individuals who lead in popular record categories, such as Most followers.”