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.[6]
"QQ" redirects here. For other uses, see QQ (disambiguation).
QQ Coin[edit]
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.[15] 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.[16][17] However, this only caused the value of QQ coins to rise as more and more third-party vendors started to accept them.[18] Tencent claims the QQ Coin is a mere regular commodity, and is, therefore, not a currency.[19]
QQ International[edit]
Windows[edit]
In 2009, QQ began to expand its services internationally with its QQ International client for Windows distributed through a dedicated English-language portal.[21]
QQ International offers non-Mandarin speakers the opportunity to use most of the features of its Chinese counterpart to get in touch with other QQ users via chat, VoIP, and video calls, and it provides a non-Mandarin interface to access Qzone, Tencent's social network. The client supports English, French, Spanish, German, Korean, Japanese and Traditional Chinese.
One of the main features of QQ International is the optional and automatic machine translation in all chats.
Android[edit]
An Android version of QQ International was released in September 2013.[22] The client's interface is in English, French, Spanish, German, Korean, Japanese and Traditional Chinese. In addition to text messaging, users can send each other images, videos, and audio media messages. Moreover, users can share multimedia content with all contacts through the client's Qzone interface.
The live translation feature is available for all incoming messages and supports up to 18 languages.
Partnerships[edit]
In India, Tencent has partnered with ibibo[24] to bring services such as chat, mail and game to the developing Indian internet sphere.
In Vietnam, Tencent has struck a deal with VinaGame[25] 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,[26] QQ Games came bundled with the AIM installer, and competed with AOL's own games.com to provide a gaming experience for the AIM user base.
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.
Merchandise[edit]
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[edit]
Coral QQ[edit]
Coral QQ, a modification of Tencent QQ, is another add-on for the software, providing free access to some of the services and blocking Tencent's advertisements. In 2006, Tencent filed a copyright lawsuit against Chen Shoufu (aka Soft), the author of Coral QQ, after his distribution of a 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.[30] The case resulted in a three-year prison sentence for Shoufu.[31]
Security[edit]
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.[40]