Alibaba Group released today the 4.0 version of Laiwang, a social networking service which helps users to keep in touch with their good friends, to tap into instant messaging market after the e-commerce giant established Internet Communication Department earlier this month. In addition, users can establish discussion groups with up to 500 members, much higher than WeChat’s 40 members. He added that Laiwang can draw upon the huge user base secured by other platforms under Alibaba Group. After two years, however, the registered users of WeChat surpassed 400 million, while Laiwang only records 1 million users. Alibaba released a series of promotion activities with the release of 4.0 version.