QQ - China IM Service Goes Web 2.0, With Half a Billion Registered Users!
Written by Gang Lu and edited by Richard MacManus. China's QQ.com is the world's 9th largest web property and in this post Gang Lu talks with Richard Chang, the Founder and Director of QQ Labs, to find out more about their Web 2.0 plans.
Founded by
Pony Ma in Shenzhen, China, in November 1998, Tencent is now recognized as the leading
provider of Internet, mobile & telecommunications value-added services in China. QQ, Tencent's instant messaging service platform,
officially launched in Feb 1999 and announced in its 2006 Q3 report that it has
221.4 million active users. What's more, the total registered user
accounts has climbed to 572.3 million!
Tencent
Innovation Center, also called QQ Labs, was founded in May 2005 and acts as QQ's
Web2.0 service incubator. So far it has launched Tencent's web2.0 service QQVideo and a social bookmarking service called QQ Bookmark is in public beta
testing. So this Chinese IM giant is obviously showing a lot of interest in the
web2.0 market.
We recently interviewed Richard Chang, the Founder and Director of QQ Labs. In this talk with Richard, we cover Tencent's business model, its web2.0 services and the overall mission of QQ Labs.
Tencent's Industry Model
Richard told us that Tencent's industry
model is unique in the global market and that all of their current businesses are built
on top of the QQ IM service and its user base. QQ is famous for its IM client, but after
7 years QQ has built up several more excellent services - QQ.com, QQ Game, QQ Zone, QQ Show, Paipai.com, and more. All of these services have been
seamlessly integrated with QQ IM and can be accessed with a user's QQ account. QQ even
introduced a virtual currency named Q-coin, which can be used by QQ users to buy their IM
avatar's virtual clothes, hairstyles, furniture - and even virtual pet food for their
virtual pets!
QQ.com is in the global top 10 websites in the world, as ranked by Alexa.com. As of now, it is number 9 in the world - just behind Orkut and Windows Live. It has also made some sharp business moves. For example Tencent partnered with China Mobile, the state-owned mobile operator, to offer mobile messaging services such as QQ ringtone downloads, QQ MMS, and similar services. And earlier this year, Tencent and TCL announced a joint iTQQ service - an IPTV solution, bundled with QQ's other services such as IM and games.
QQ's Web2.0 Services
According to Richard Chang, Tencent's goal is to become the most respected Internet company in China. He told us that while you can already see lots of web2.0 characteristics in their current services, he hopes that QQ Labs can offer even more web2.0 services and interesting web-based applications to QQ's user base.
QQVideo, a video-sharing site, was the first web2.0
service developed by QQ Labs. There are over 200 YouTube-like services already in China,
but Richard Chang thinks that QQVideo can be special. He said that QQVideo has a user
base from the very beginning - and it is those users that "help us decide what should and
what should not [be] in the video-sharing site". Some neat features in
the service are: Online Recording, V-Pub, Views Details (where the user can track
on which sites a video is embedded and played).
The QQ Bookmark service is a very nice del.icio.us-like service. But the most important thing about it is that QQ can integrate this service with its hugely popular IM service and so encourage its millions of users to share their favorite websites and stories.
The Mission of QQ Labs
It is an interesting phenomenon in the Chinese Internet that QQ IM might be the first Internet experience for many Chinese netizens, especially for young people who get on the Internet because all their friends are on QQ . If you are a professional or experienced on the Internet, it should be easy to understand the new ideas of retrieving, publishing and sharing content via technology like RSS feeds, blogging, widgets and web-based applications such as online bookmarking. However most Chinese netizens don't know what RSS is, or how to use feeds, or the benefits of using online bookmarks.
"QQ has a massive user base, and it can be [a] very effective channel to distribute the concept of web2.0 to the Chinese netizen", Richard Chang told us. "Our mission", he said, "is not only to create new services, but also to help the Chinese Internet [become] more mature."
Chinese Internet ramping up in 2007
The Web space in China is heating up. Myspace.cn will be launched in China this year and will join the existing social network competition there. Also Baidu, the leading search engine in China, has announced it will move into the Japanese market in 2007. So there will be lots of news - inwards and outwards - from the Chinese Internet this year; and as part of that it will be interesting to see how QQ expands its kingdom abroad.
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Half a billion, wow. I'm impressed. That's around half of China and they're probably "all" Chinese since the program looks to be native to that language. So if/when they expand their marketing strategy, they'll have all those AIM, Yahoo Msgr, and MSN msgr users who'd like to try something new and novel (novel because it's Chinese). I think this is only the beginning for QQ.
Interesting perspective on China mobile.
That's impossible, that's a quarter of China's total population, half a billion doesn't make any logic, given most of China is still rural and their number of internet users is barely that of the U.S - and not all of Americans have internet and total U.S population is only 300 millions!
That number seems pretty bloated. It's safe to take any number coming out from China and divide by at least 10.
appalled, the half a billion number is the registered user base, not our active user base, which is around 220M(Q306). According to CNNIC, the Internet population in China is 137M with a 76% broadband penetration rate. An unique behavior in China is that many users have 2 or even more active IM accounts. That could be an important reason to explain the gap. Hope this helps.
The most interesting thing about QQ is the great business model they have. They don't just 'rehash' all of the used business model, but they adapt and apply to their country - China. Wish I am that creative. :\
I love the design of some of the sites designed by the Chinese. They use bright, happy colors. QQ.com is a good example.
Installation package of QQ is 18M, after installed it becomes 100M, and would become larger and larger for it storing (not caching) all those "lovely" pictures, icons you received from your friends. The total size of my QQ now is 450M, and I don't think it's "lovely" any more.
Tencent's adapt and apply strategy means they never innovates. What they do is only "copying" (or stealing) popular ideas, and make their own products. Why users would like to use this kind of "latest" services? Because Tencent make them into QQ and sometimes even "reminds" (or forces) you to use them by QQ's popup dialog.
Simpy just announced support for Simplified Chinese the other day (see the announcement), so this is interesting to me. I looked at QQ Bookmarks, but it seemed that to access any piece of the service one has to be logged in - I couldn't get past the welcome page. Am I missing something?
Otis Gospodnetic: QQ Bookmark is currently in invitation only mode, that's why you can't get in. Unfortunately, right now the service is all in Chinese. We do plan to put more international flavor in the future though. Thanks!
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Honestly, from my point of view, Tecnent's credibility has always been a question. The company is a tricky company. They got a lot of "FREE" services, but with a lot of obstacles and create great difficulties for their users. And they also provide charged alternative services on the other hand.
Tencent's IM system QQ is kind of copied from ICQ which has been around for a long time. QQ client is as tricky as the company itself. As Cat Chen stated above, the QQ client is a massive piece of crap that provides lots of useless functionalities along with annoying advertisement system (they call it system notice broadcasting) - you basically got a pop up from nowhere every minute after you install the client.
Tencent wants to go Web 2.0 but their developers are just too dumb. The web client that QQ has been developing is not even working in Firefox. And the registration page magically detected that my Firefox and IE were both using HTTP/1.0.
QQ is also addictive for most dumb people. Tencent utilized this point. Now QQ is too much more than IM service, it is everything around you, it got all your office hours and family hours.
To ban QQ, you need to ban all udp traffic on port 8000, and ban all port 80 tcp traffic to the following IP addresses:
219.133.48.103
219.133.38.5
219.133.49.211
219.133.60.173
58.60.14.45
219.133.38.230
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