More than half of Chinese university students have experience running official accounts on the popular mobile messaging app WeChat, according to a survey conducted by China University Media Union.

About 500 students participated in a survey by the organization. Official or public WeChat accounts can send out single messages to a much larger number of followers than individual users. Many media organizations, brands and individuals have accounts on WeChat, the widely used app by Internet giant Tencent Holding Ltd.

The survey found that 55.89 percent of respondents had experience running official WeChat accounts while 43.93 percent launched them by themselves or with friends.

Some 66 percent said accounts by university students can offer content and views more related to readers than other forms of media.

Seeing the growing popularity of the social networking program, Chongqing Normal University has included operating official WeChat accounts on various topics as an assignment for students majoring in journalism.

The survey also showed that 65.96 percent of respondents view the major difficulties in running such accounts to be a limited number of followers and a lack of promotion.

Li Zihao, a student majoring in finance at Liaoning University, started a public account in July 2014 and got 150 followers on the first day. Li now wants to grow his number of followers from 471 to 1,000 before graduation next year.

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