Tencent QQ

QQ is an abbreviation of Tencent QQ, which provides customers with a popular instant messaging software service. The company was founded by Huateng Ma in 1998 and is currently located in Shenzhen, China. By 10 September 2012, there were 784 million active user accounts with approximately 100 million users online at a time. According to Alexa Internet rankings, the website of QQ is the 9th most visited website in the world as of March 2013. QQ filed for an initial public offering in Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2004, under the name Tencent Holdings Limited (SEHK: 0700). QQ also offers customers a variety of services, including online social games, music, shopping, micro blogging, and group & voice chat. Tencent has been one of the most successful social networking companies in mainland China and in 2012 earned ￥450,000,000,000 in revenue.

Current releases

Stable

Preview

Naming

The original name of QQ was OICQ ("Open ICQ"), based on a previous instant messaging service (IMS), ICQ, the abbreviation of which came from using letters that sounded like "I seek you".

History

Tencent was founded in Shenzhen, China, on 11 November 1998, by Ma Huateng. Its instant messaging service platform "OICQ" was formally launched in February 1999. Possibly in 2001, the product name was changed to "QQ".^{[citation needed]} In March 2003, Tencent bought the Internet Domain QQ.com. On 16 July 2004, Tencent Holdings Limited (SEHK 700) went public.

Development

In February 1999, Tencent Inc. developed an instant messaging software "OICQ" (later renamed "QQ") which inherited existing functions from ICQ with additional features of software skins, people's images, and motions.^{[citation needed]} QQ was first released as a "Network Paging" real time communications service. Then other mainly free-of-charge features were added, such as chatrooms, games, personal avatars (similar to "Meego" in MSN), internet storage, and internet dating services.

The current preview version of QQ is QQ2011 beta2.^[16] Tencent periodically releases special versions of QQ to coincide with events such as the Olympics or Chinese New Year.

The official client runs on Microsoft Windows and a beta public version was launched for Mac OS X version 10.4.9 or newer.^[17] Formerly, two web versions, WebQQ (full version) and WebQQ Mini (Lite version), which made use of Ajax, were available.^[18][19] Development, support, and availability of WebQQ Mini, however, have since been discontinued. On 31 July 2008, Tencent released an official client for Linux,^[20] but this has not since been kept in step with the Windows version and it is not capable of voice chat.

In response to competition with Windows Live Messenger, Tencent released Tencent Messenger, which is for business people. It also provides, in limited form, features that are only available to premium members in normal QQ.

A beta version of QQ is currently available for Symbian S60 3rd Edition.^[21]

Membership

In 2002, Tencent stopped its free membership registration, requiring all new members to pay a fee, but in 2003, this decision was reversed due to pressure from other instant messaging services such as Windows Live Messenger and Sina UC. Tencent currently offers a premium membership scheme, which offers features such as QQ mobile, ringtone downloads, and SMS sending/receiving. In addition, Tencent offers "Diamond" level memberships. Currently, there are seven diamond services available:

• Red, for the QQ Show service which features the ability to make an avatar for yourself.
• Yellow, for the Qzone service which is similar to a blog.
• Blue, which is for QQ games.
• Purple, which is shared between four Tencent games, QQNana, a Korean dancing game, QQTang, an action game, extremely similar to crazy acrade and Pacman and QQSpeed, a car race game, and R2beat, a roller skating rhythm racing game.
• Pink, for QQ pet, a small desktop game about raising a pet. So far there are 3 generations of pets. Penguin, Pig, and Bear (beta testing).
• Greenish, for QQ music, which is a software for listening to music directly from the Tencent server. Requiring no pre-download, though sometimes consuming a lot of disk space due to caching.
• VIP, for chatting, beta testing, removing advertising, and several additional features
• Black (recently introduced) DNF (地下城与勇士), a Tencent PVP game^[22]

Merchandise

Tencent has taken advantage of the popularity of the QQ brand, and has set up many Q-Gen stores selling QQ branded merchandise such as bags, watches, clothing as well as toy penguins.

Controversies and criticisms

QQ has faced many criticisms and controversies. Many users complain QQ provides fewer and fewer free services and an annoying number of ads.^{[citation needed]}

Dispute with Qihoo 360

In 2010, Chinese anti-virus company, Qihoo 360, analyzed the QQ protocol and accused QQ of automatically scanning users' computers and of uploading their personal information to QQ's servers without users' consent. In response, Tencent called 360 itself malware and denied users with 360 installed access to some QQ services. The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information reprimanded both companies for "improper competition" and ordered them to come to an accord.^[23]

Other issues

A program distributed with QQ censors and monitors the user's behavior on the Web.^[24]

Because of QQ's extensive use of advertisements and processes related to ads, it has been branded as malicious adware by many anti-virus and anti-spyware vendors.^[25][26][27] However, difficulty of enforcement has made real name registration optional.^[28]

The resources required to run QQ have increased substantially since it was first released, which has caused some people^[who?] to turn to third party "lite" versions.^{[citation needed]}

Q coin

The Q coin is a virtual currency used by QQ users to "purchase" QQ related items for their avatar and blog. Q coins are obtained either by purchase, one coin for one RMB, or for using the mobile phone service. Due to the popularity of QQ among young Chinese, Q coins are now accepted by gradually more and more online stores and gaming sites in exchange for "real" merchandise such as small gifts, and raised the concern of replacing (and thus "inflating") real currency in these transactions. The People's Bank of China, China's central bank, says it is investigating the possibility of cracking down on Q coin, due to people using Q coins in exchange for real world goods.^[29] Tencent claims the Q coin was merely a regular commodity, and thus not a currency.^[30]

Modifications

Coral QQ, a modification of Tencent QQ, is another add on. While Tencent charges for some services and displays advertisement, Coral QQ provides free access to some of the services and blocks Tencent's advertisements. In 2006, Tencent filed a copyright lawsuit against Chen Shoufu (aka Soff), the author of Coral QQ, whose redistributing modified Tencent QQ was ruled illegal. Chen then published his modification as a separate add on. On 16 August 2007, Chen was detained again for allegedly making profits off of his ad-blocking add on.^[31] His case is pending at Shenzhen Nanshan district court.^{[citation needed]}

QQ International

In 2009, QQ began to expand its services internationally, with its IMQQ portal,^[32] working with partners throughout Asia and the USA.

In India, Tencent has partnered with ibibo^[33] to bring such services as chat, mail and game to the developing Indian internet sphere.

In Vietnam, Tencent has struck a deal with VinaGame^[34] to bring the QQ Casual Gaming portal as well as the QQ Messenger as an addition to the already thriving Vietnamese gaming communities.

In the United States, Tencent has partnered with AOL to bring QQ Games as a contender in the US social gaming market. Launched in 2007,^[35] QQ Games comes bundled with the AIM installer, and competes with AOL's own games.com to provide a gaming experience for the AIM user base.

Web QQ

Tencent launched its web-based QQ formally on 15 September 2009, the latest version of which being 3.0. Rather than solely a web-based IM, WebQQ 3.0 functions more like its own operating system, with a desktop in which web applications can be added.

Social network website

In 2009, Tencent launched Xiaoyou (校友, 'schoolmate'), its first social network website, trying to compete with Renren and Kaixin001, the Chinese social networks, mainly for students. In mid-2010, Tencent changed direction and replaced Xiaoyou with Pengyou.com (朋友, 'friends'), trying to establish a more widespread network, to which extant QQ users could be easily redirected, hence giving Pengyou.com a major advantage over its competitors. Open Web QQ at http://web.qq.com^[36]

Open source and cross-platform clients

Using reverse engineering, open source communities have come to understand the QQ protocol better and have attempted to implement client core libraries compatible with more user-friendly clients, free of advertisements. Most of these clients are cross-platform, so they are usable on operating systems which the official client does not support. However, these implementations had only a subset of the functions of the official client and therefore were more limited in features. Furthermore, QQ's parent company, Tencent, has over successive versions modified the QQ protocol to the extent that it can no longer be supported by most, and perhaps any, of the third-party implementations that were successful in the past (some of which are listed below). As of 2009, none of the developers of third-party clients have publicized any plans to restore QQ support.

• Pidgin, an open source cross-platform multiprotocol client, with third-party plugin
• Adium, an open source Mac OSX client, with third-party plugin built on top of libqq-pidgin
• Kopete, an open source multiprotocol client designed for KDE
  • Note: Kopete, old versions of Pidgin, and any other client whose QQ support is based on libpurple no longer supports QQ as of May 2011^[37]
• Miranda IM, an open source multiprotocol client, designed for Microsoft Windows, with MirandaQQ2^[38] plugin.
• Eva
• There also used to be several public Jabber Transports available. Most of them stopped working due to frequent protocol changes made by Tencent. A service available at Open-QQ.tk, which uses the third-party plugin for Pidgin seems to be the only one working left.

See also

• Weixin (Tencent service)
• Tencent
• Perbandingan -- instant messaging clients
• Daftar/Tabel -- virtual communities with more than 100 million active users

References

External links

• (Chinese) Official website
• (Chinese) QQ Portal
• (English) "Inside QQ" research report by +8* Plus Eight Star
• (English) Learning Chinese Using QQ (English-Chinese QQ Translator)
• (English) English version of QQ
• (English) Tencent's first offering in the United States
• (English) Tencent QQ services overview
• (English) Daftar/Tabel -- official QQ client alternatives
• (Thai) Thai localization of QQ