Date Created: November 25, 2022

QQ Interesting Key Facts

• OICQ was the original name of Tencent QQ when it was first released in February 1999.
• OICQ means Open ICQ, a reference to the early IM ICQ.
• AOL, owner of ICQ, threatened Tencent for trademark infringement lawsuit, because of this, OICQ’s name was changed into QQ.
• The QQ name implies “cute” in chinese messenger culture back in the earlier days.
• Nowadays, specially in the gaming community, QQ is used as a taunt by players to imply two big crying eyes with tears falling down.
• Web QQ, the web version of the app, was shut down last 2019 as part of Tencent restructuring its businesses.
• QQ Kandia, an app meant to compete with ByteDance, was also shutdown on August 2022.
• QQ mail, a mail service provider associated with QQ, had a functioned name “drift bottle”. Users on QQ can ‘throw’ these drift bottles, while staying anonymous, into a virtual ocean where other users can then pick up these “floating” drift bottles. Although one can throw anonymously, it was still possible to put in contact information inside the drift bottles.
• Tencent closed the drift bottle function in 2019.
• QQ coin is a virtual currency used by QQ users to purchased items in QQ. However, the People’s Bank of China tried to crack down on these coins due to QQ users using the virtual currency to purchase real world goods.

Sources: Infomory, Language Log, Dictionary, Quartz 1, Quartz 2, SCMP

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At a glance:

Sources: Infomory, QQ, GB Times

QQ: Total Number of Monthly Active Users - 2017 (Quarterly)