Tencent Weibo has over 540 million registered accounts; VK.com has over 200 million registered accounts.

“Adding Tencent Weibo and VK.com to our lineup lets our users expand their reach around the world,” Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuite, said in a statement. “Social has no boundaries. In fact, HootSuite has users in nearly every country worldwide, and is available in 15 languages and counting.”

HootSuite, which recently unveiled swanky new digs in Vancouver, Canada, is already integrated with other regional social networks such as Sina Weibo and Renren in China, Orkut, which maintains a foothold in Brazil, Viadeo, and Xing. And today, the company announced a new language: Russian.

Major brands that use Tencent Weibo include the NBA, Coca Cola, Pepsi, and Red Bull, and HootSuite says 79 of the Fortune 100 are its clients. The company grew sales to enterprise clients under $10 billion 272 percent and enterprises over $10 billion 900 percent in the first quarter of 2013, as new VP of marketing, Dee Anna McPherson — formerly of Yammer, helps accelerate its deployment into and within corporations.

The company’s Tencent Weibo integration includes such new features as posting and scheduling updates, viewing and leaving comments on posts, searching and filtering content, and using multiple profiles. For VK.com, HootSuite supports posting status updates, viewing and posting comments, liking updates, and monitoring news and updates.

“With our newest app integrations, you can use HootSuite to connect with hundreds of millions of users on the biggest social networks in China and Russia,” Holmes said.

HootSuite recently surpassed the six million user mark.

photo credit: @Doug88888 via photopin cc

What does a massive social network following and criticizing China’s government from within the country get you? For Kai-fu Lee, the former head of Google in China, it was a three-day ban.

Lee, now chief executive of the Chinese startup incubator Innovation Works, announced on his Twitter page that he has been banned from Sina and Tencent’s Weibo microblogging sites for three days. Bloomberg confirmed the ban with him by phone.

Lee urged his Weibo followers to join him on Twitter, where he has almost 1 million followers, but given that Twitter is banned in China, only his most hardcore fans would be able to follow that advice. (It’s possible to access banned services from within China, but it takes a bit of technical know-how.)

While Lee didn’t say why he was banned from Weibo, recent postings suggest the move was related to his criticisms of China. As Bloomberg points out:

A Feb. 16 post summarized a Wall Street Journal article about how slow speeds and instability deter overseas businesses from locating critical functions in China. Last month, he also posted support for staff of a Guangzhou-based newspaper during a standoff with government censors.

The tone of Lee’s comments, coupled with his massive social media following within China, likely don’t endear him to China’s authorities.

For all of his criticisms, Lee also believes in China’s ability to spark strong businesses. He raised a $180 million fund for Innovation Works in 2011 and explained to VentureBeat how he views the difference between China and the United States.

In reality, it’s not that different from the United States. Companies that have a good product and business model and a good culture that cares about users will succeed. Some companies are overvalued and maybe even bubble, but just as many are very good and show great promise. The trick is picking the winners — just like in the U.S.

Chao said the business model and corporate strategy around Weibo must be handled differently adding, “Weibo’s growth should be based on an incentive structure not an IPO”. He said that there are still many synergies between the new and old businesses and that they are not done learning from each other just yet.

Chao did not go into any detail about what the incentive structure would look like but added that Weibo is a unique way of interacting with the online ecosystem so it will need a unique business model to go along with it.

But monetizing the site isn’t at the top of the company’s agenda.  Its highest priority, Chao said, is to build its platform and user base.