QQ.com's old logo

Naming

The original name of QQ was OICQ. The name was based on an already existing IMS (Internet Message Service), "ICQ".

ICQ was one of the first IMS programs. The acronym "ICQ" came from the fact that the letters sound like "I seek you".

"OICQ" stood for "Oriental ICQ" but because of possible trademark infringement was changed to "QQ"

History

Tencent was founded in Shenzhen, China in November, 1998. Tencent's instant messaging service platform, "QQ," was formally launched in February 1999. After years of strong business growth, on July 16, 2004, Tencent Holdings Limited (SEHK 700) went public

Development

QQ was initially developed by Tencent Inc. in February 1999. It was first released as a "Network Paging" real time communications service. Then other features were successively added such as chatrooms, games, personal avatars (similar to "Meebo" in MSN), internet storage, and internet dating services. Most of these features were free. Its variety of features and easy-to-use interface made it very popular, especially among teenage users. In a few short years it was the most popular real time communications service in China.

The current version of QQ is QQ2008II Beta 1.^[3] 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 were launched for Mac. The web version, which makes use of Ajax, is currently in Beta^[4]. On July 31th, 2008 Tencent released an official client for Linux. ^[5]

User Interface of Tencent Messenger

Membership

QQ currently allows free registration for membership. In 2002, Tencent had stopped its free membership registration, requiring all new members to pay a fee. However, free registration was reopened in 2003 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 mobile QQ, ringtone downloads and SMS sending/receiving. In addition, Tencent offers Diamond noble memberships. Currently, there are seven diamond services available:

• Red, for the QQ show service.
• Yellow, for the Qzone service which is similar to a blog.
• Blue, which is for QQ games.
• Purple, which is shared between three Tencent games, QQNana, a Korean dancing game, QQTang, an action game, extremely similar to crazy arcade, and QQSpeed, a race 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).
• Green, for QQ music, which is a software for listening to music directly from the Tencent server. Requiring no pre-download and sometimes consuming a lot of disk space due to caching.
• VIP, for chat, beta test things, no advertising and some more
• Black (introduced more recently) DNF which is ?????? in Chinese is a Tencent game which contain PVP^[6]

Merchandise

Tencent taken advantage of the popularity of the QQ brand, and have 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.

Adware classification

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. ^{[7] [8] [9]}

Keyword filtering

On August 2004, QQ Games began filtering keywords such as "???" (Diaoyu Islands) and "??" (Movement to protect the Diaoyu Islands). This act caused much controversy and Tencent has since lifted the filter.^[10]

QQ real group name scheme

On July 21 2005, Tencent announced its intention to follow orders set by Shenzhen Police and enforce the requirement of real names for all the administrators and founders of QQ Groups. This caused much controversy on whether it can prevent the spread of pornographic and other indecent messages, or whether it intrudes on one's privacy. However, the difficulty of enforcement made the real name registration optional. ^[11]

Plagiarism

Tencent QQ has been known to copy its competitors' features. The interface of early version of Tencent messenger was almost identical to ICQ, but as it developed, it started to look more like Windows Live Messenger. The interface of QQ is Luna themed. In addition to interfaces, QQ has also been known to copy code and text from its competitors. For example, one release contained Skype's EULA, allegedly as an April Fools' Day joke.^[12]

Resource usage

The resources required to run QQ have increased substantially since it was first released, which has caused some people to turn to third party "lite" versions.

QQ Coin

A stats display window with all services (icons) turned on and leveling info included.

Modifications

Coral QQ, a modification of Tencent QQ, is a popular 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 August 16, 2007, Chen was detained again for allegedly making profits off his ad-blocking add on^[15]. His case is pending at Shenzhen Nanshan district court.

Open source and cross-platform clients

Using reverse engineering, open source communities have come to understand the QQ protocol better and have implemented client core libraries and user-friendly clients. Most of these clients are cross-platform, so they are usable on operating systems which the official client does not support. However, these implementations have only a subset of the functions of the official client and therefore are more limited in features.

• Adium, an open source multiprotocol client for Mac OS X
• Pidgin, an open source cross-platform multiprotocol client
• Carrier, an open source cross-platform multiprotocol client based on Pidgin.
• Miranda IM, an open source multiprotocol client, designed for Microsoft Windows
• Instantbird an open source multiprotocol client that uses software from Pidgin and Mozilla
• Eva IM client is a client for the K Desktop Environment (KDE) that can be used to access the QQ network.
• LumaQQ Is an open source QQ client using the Java SWT implementation.
• TextQQ Is an open source command line QQ client that uses the LumaQQ core library.

See also

• Comparison of instant messaging clients

References

External links

• QQ Portal (in Chinese)
• Official Site (in Chinese)
• Chinese preview version for Mac (in Chinese)
• Preview version for Linux (in Chinese)
• "Inside QQ" research report by +8* Plus Eight Star (in English)
• South African QQ.co.za site (in English)
• Learning Chinese Using QQ (in English)
• English preview for QQ (In English)
• Tencent's first offering in the United States (in English)
• Overview of Tencent QQ Services (in English)
• Thai localization of QQ (in Thai)

cs:Tencent QQ de:Tencent QQ es:Qq fr:Tencent QQ ko:??? QQ it:QQ (instant messenger) ja:?????QQ pt:QQ ru:Tencent QQ simple:Tencent QQ sv:QQ th:???????? QQ zh:??QQ

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