China’s leading Internet and mobile portal, Tencent Holdings Limited, has acquired Comsenz.com, which runs Discuz, the country’s leading Bulletin Board System (BBS) for about $60 million. Google is said to have invested $1 million in Comsenz.

Bulletin boards are old school in the US but they attract over 130 million people per month in China. With the acquisition Tencent will become the brand name that powers up to 80% of Chinese websites that use BBS forums to engage their customers.

According to MOBINODE, the integration of Tencent and Comsenz.com will have a number of noticeable impacts:

- Websites with BBS forums “Powered by Discuz!” will now be “Powered by Tencent”,
- Tencent’s search engine, SOSO, will become the default service incorporated with Discuz,
- Tencent will begin further integrating with the BBS its existing software services such as: QQ (instant messaging), QZone (online content), and Paipai and Tenpay (online payment).

Tencent operates several online services including web portal QQ.com, search engine soso.com , a mobile and a gaming portal.