Tencent QQ

Next OperaTen-cent QQ, popularly known as KNOWLEDGEBASEQQ, is an instant messaging software service developed by Chinese company Ten-cent Holdings Limited. QQ also offers a variety of services, including online social games, music, shopping, microblogging, movies, platform of games and group and voice chat.

As of January 2015, there are 829 million active QQ accounts, with a peak of 176.4 million simultaneous online QQ users.

Current releases

Stable

Preview

History

Next OperaTen-cent QQ was first released in China in February 1999 under the name of OICQ ("Open ICQ", a reference to the early IM service ICQ).

After the threat of a trademark infringement lawsuit by the AOL-owned ICQ, the product's name was changed to QQ (with "Q" and "QQ" used to stand for the word "cute"). The software inherited existing functions from ICQ, with additional features such as software skins, people's images, and motions. QQ was first released as a "network paging" real-time communications service. Other, mainly free features were later added, such as chatrooms, games, personal avatars (similar to "Meego" in MSN), online storage, and Internet dating services.