Exchange text messages in real time or make video and audio calls over the Internet. Communicate in one on one sessions or with entire groups and share files or stream multimedia content. Create friends lists and join online chat rooms to meet new people.
QQ International is one of the world's most used instant messaging clients. According to the information posted on the website of Tencent, the program's developer, the number of accounts on QQ IM, exceeds 710 million, with more than 145 million users at the peak concurrent use. Long story short, QQ's user base is huge. All the more astonishing is the fact I never had my hands on QQ International and haven't even heard of it before; and it was a complete revelation for me when I first downloaded this IM application. It's always exciting to explore new IM apps you have never heard about, so delving into QQ International was much fun.
The features that QQ International has to offer leave a mixed impression. For one thing, they're rather boring and don't extend far beyond the usual feature set of practically any IM client out there. You can chat with your friends, you can make new friends with literally hundreds of millions of people to subsequently bomb them with messages, emoticons, and files. You can create new chatrooms to discuss specific topics with your friends, and you have strict control over your profile settings. At the same time, there's hardly any modern IM client that would not possess such a feature set. On the other hand, this 'compulsory program' was made by Tencent to be almost impeccable. Everything runs smoothly, the UI is very intuitive and doesn't ask you riddles as is often the case with IM apps.
Perhaps the biggest shortcoming of QQ International is that there is no integration with your Facebook account. When it comes to interacting with the social media giant, all QQ International can boast is a crummy 'Like' action of the app on its Facebook page. You can't chat with your Facebook friends, you can't send them on-site messages, can't browse your Facebok feed. That sucks. A rich selection of apps that can be installed and accessed via QQ International, but even this doesn't make up for this incomprehensible lack of all things Facebook in the messenger.
Speaking app integration, the app selection actually rocks. You can play Angry Birds, read BBC News, or search for a new boyfriend on something that looks suspiciously similar to IM ported into the QQ International interface. The idea itself is just great, and its implementation is not that bad either.
To recap, QQ International is a nice IM client with a couple of nice features, but it's no big deal. It's worth giving it a chance but don't wait for any huge surprises.
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