WeChat in many ways is the upgrade to QQ. Like QQ before it, WeChat quickly gained a multitude of new features, capabilities, and users. Instead, the company came up with what we now know as WeChat, a messaging app that works even if users are on different phone carrier networks. Here’s where the story gets tragic for QQ - although not for its parent, Tencent.Īs the mobile computing era got under way, Tencent worried that desktop-native QQ would not make a successful transition. Most revenue actually comes from consumers - in the form of gaming revenue, freemium upgrades and digital purchases. By its tenth year, in 2008, the startup had 856 million total users, a record of 45.3 million simultaneous online users, and more quarterly income than the next two largest Chinese internet companies ( Alibaba and Baidu – you may have heard of them) put together.ĭespite this huge success with users, QQ and Qzone have not done as well with marketers.
QQ hit one million users in its first year and 50 million in its second. No longer just a desktop app, QQ and Qzone are also available on your smartphone. You can also stream music, find a partner via QQ’s dating service, and use the Facebook-like Qzone for sharing with friends and reading their posts in your news feed.
Today, you can play online games, customize your avatar, send and receive emails and large files, share Snapchat-style disappearing videos and animations, and join online groups of like-minded individuals. 18 years on, QQ’s redesigned logo still sports the familiar penguin, now wearing a red scarf and winking.Īt launch, QQ (then known as OICQ) was just a simple instant messenger and a blatant copy of an Israeli app called ICQ. The original 1999 logo for QQ, then known as OICQ (or Open ICQ). Tencent’s founder, Ma Huateng, known as “Pony Ma”, received startup capital from powerful billionaire Li Ka-shing through a hometown connection between the men. QQ was the first product released by the company Tencent, which is now one of the largest internet companies in the world. In other ways, however, it is only a shadow of its former self. Today, QQ still has some 850 million active monthly users – more than double the number Twitter claims. It has also survived a sustained effort by its own founders to destroy it. Despite being launched all the way back in 1999 (5 years before Facebook), QQ has survived the trials of time. The early daysĪs China’s first hugely popular messaging service, QQ shaped the development of both China’s web and mobile web. It’s also one that every marketer hoping to understand the Chinese social media environment should know. QQ’s story is inspiring and ultimately tragic - as far as tragedy goes in the world of apps.
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