Tencent QQ

Tencent QQ (Chinese :腾讯QQ), also known as QQ, is an instant messaging software service and web portal developed by the Chinese technology company Tencent. QQ offers services that provide online social games, music, shopping, microblogging, movies, and group and voice chat software. As of March 2023, there were 597 million monthly active QQ accounts.^[7]

Tencent QQ was first released in China in February 1999 under the name of OICQ ("Open ICQ", a reference to the early IM service ICQ).^{[8] [9] [10] [11]}

After the threat of a trademark infringement lawsuit by the AOL-owned ICQ, the product's name was changed to QQ^{[9] [10] [11]} (with "Q" and "QQ" used to imply "cute").^{[8] [11]} The software inherited existing functions from ICQ, and additional features such as software skins, people's images, and emoticons.^{[citation needed ]} QQ was first released as a "network paging" real-time communications service. Other features were later added, such as chatrooms, games, personal avatars (similar to "Meego" in MSN), online storage, and Internet dating services.

The official client runs on Microsoft Windows and a beta public version was launched for Mac OS X version 10.4.9 or newer.^[12] Formerly, two web versions, WebQQ (full version) and WebQQ Mini (Lite version), which made use of Ajax, were available.^{[13] [14]} Development, support, and availability of WebQQ Mini, however, has since been discontinued. On 31 July 2008, Tencent released an official client for Linux,^[15] but this has not been made compatible with the Windows version and it is not capable of voice calls.

In response to competition with other instant messengers, such as Windows Live Messenger, Tencent released Tencent Messenger, which is aimed at businesses.

The QQ Coin is a virtual currency used by QQ users to "purchase" QQ related items for their avatar and blog. QQ Coins are obtained either by purchase (one coin for one RMB) or by using the mobile phone service. Due to the popularity of QQ among young people in China, QQ Coins are accepted by online vendors in exchange for "real" merchandise such as small gifts.^[16] This has raised concerns of replacing (and thus "inflating") real currency in these transactions.

The People's Bank of China, China's central bank, tried to crack down on QQ Coins due to people using QQ Coins in exchange for real world goods.^{[17] [18]} However, this only caused the value of QQ coins to rise as more and more third-party vendors started to accept them.^[19] Tencent claims the QQ Coin is a mere regular commodity, and is, therefore, not a currency.^[20]

Qzone is a social networking website based in China which was created by Tencent in 2005.^[21] Qzone is a personal blog for QQ users. It can be set as a public page or a private friend-only page. Users can upload diaries and share photos.

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.

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 functions of the official client and therefore were 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, also known as: GAIM an open source cross-platform multiprotocol client, with third-party plugin.
• Adium, an open source macOS client, with third-party plugin built on top of libqq-pidgin
• Kopete, an open source multiprotocol client by KDE
  • Note: Kopete, old versions of Pidgin, and any other client whose QQ support was based on libpurple no longer supports QQ as of May 2011^[29]
• Miranda NG, an open source multiprotocol client, designed for Microsoft Windows, with MirandaQQ2^[30] plugin.
• Eva
• Trillian, is a Multiprotocol Instant Messaging Software made as Freeware Developed by Cerulean Studios which ran off Plugins to connect to things such as: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger and XMPP/Jabber.

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.

• The accounts of QQ are purely a combination of numbers. The account numbers provided for the registered users are selected randomly by the system user registration. In 1995, the registered QQ accounts had only 5 digits, while currently, the digital numbers used for QQ accounts has reached 12. The first QQ number is held by Ma Huateng and his account number is 10001.
• Membership to a QQ account usually lasts one month. When this membership is overdue and not renewed, the membership of the account will be suspended.
• In relation to calculating "QQ Age", being logged in for 2 full hours would be considered as one full day. Thus, being logged in to QQ for around 700 hours would make the age increase by 1 year. In the 2012 version of QQ, users can see the age on the personal information page.
• In 2004, Tencent launched QQ hierarchy which shows the level of a registered member. At the very beginning, this hierarchy was solely based on the hours a member spent in QQ. Hence, the longer the member stayed, the higher level they can attain. These results, however, were criticized as people tend to waste electrical energy due to longer hours of stay on the site. Therefore, Tencent changed the basis from an hour unit to a daily unit due to the involvement of several departments.

On March 6, 2015, QQ scored 2 out of 7 points on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's secure messaging scorecard. It received points for having communications encrypted in transit and for having a recent independent security audit. It lost points because communications are not end-to-end encrypted, users can not verify contacts' identities, past messages are not secure if the encryption keys are stolen (i.e. the service does not provide forward secrecy), the code is not open to independent review (i.e. the code is not open-source), and the security design is not properly documented.^[41]

• Comparison of instant messaging clients
• WeChat

• (in Chinese) Official website