"The original social network — where Chinese internet grew up"
About QQ
QQ, launched in 1999 by Tencent, was the defining social platform of China's internet for over a decade. QQ groups, QQ Space, and QQ's iconic emoticon library shaped how hundreds of millions of Chinese people first communicated online.
Why It Matters for Meme Culture
QQ is the foundation on which Chinese internet culture was built. QQ groups were the first large-scale online communities for Chinese users — every interest, every school class, every workplace had a QQ group long before WeChat groups existed. The QQ emoticon library (QQ表情) was one of China's first shared visual languages, and many of those original stickers became the archetypes for meme faces still used today. QQ Space pioneered the personalized social page, the status update, and the public diary — habits that feel native to WeChat now were actually born in QQ. Today QQ survives primarily among China's Gen-Z teenagers and gaming communities.