Tencent is one of the leading Chinese IT companies. It makes the very popular free Chinese chat program QQ and the company is therefore generally called QQ. Tencent started in 1998 as an open ICQ version, but has since developped many services ranging from a video site , to forum site , games site , ringtones and so on. All of those sites are linked to the main portal of QQ : qq.com

Working at Tencent

Currently I am working in Tencent as one of only very few foreigners (in fact, most of the time I'm the only Westerner in Tencent's Shenzhen headquarter).  I really enjoy working in this company, although communication is always very hard since my Chinese is very limited. Thankfully most colleagues can and are willing to speak English with me. As a foreign employee of Tencent, I hope I can help other foreigners with some tips about Tencent. It's not just an IM program in China, it's a whole lifestyle here and there are so many interesting products that are difficult to appreciate because of the language barriers. On this page you will find some background information about Tencent.

Usage

Tencent currently has over 741.7 million (early 2008) registered QQ accounts with about 300 million active accounts! These are very impressive numbers, but the chances are pretty good that most foreigners have never heard about QQ. Almost all of Tencent's users are from China. There are also users in other parts of Asia and in South-Africa. IM usage seems to depend heavily on the part of the world where you live. In the Netherlands it is MSN for example, here in China it's QQ.

Offices 

Tencent's headquarter is in Shenzhen. Tencent operates from several buildings in and around the high-tech park in Nanshan, but currently Tencent is building it's own office near the Nanshan police station it is scheduled for completion at the end of 2008/early 2009. Besides Shenzhen, Tencent has offices in all the other major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqin and so on. It also operates IDC's (Internet Data Centers, or servers) in many locations all around China. Actually I have no idea where, but there are many locations. This is of course inevitable when you have over 200 million active users. There are several thousand people working for Tencent in total, but I'm not sure what the exact number is. With the expected growth of the Chinese market, I'm sure this will only increase. 

Merchandise and Advertising

One way of revenue for Tencent is selling qq coins, or virtual money. With this virtual money, users can buy services online such as ringtones, games, but also use premium memberships, more storage online and so on. Another important source of income is advertising via the IM and the QQ frontpage. If you would like to advertise on qq.com or inside the QQ messenger, you can contact me and I can get you into contact with the people from the advertising department. Tencent also does advertising for specific products like 7up.qq.com .

Future plans 

In the second half of 2008, Tencent plans to expand it's business significantly in the gaming market in China. Currently Tencent is ranked 5th in this market (after for example Shanda and Netease). Tencent plans to boost its staff by a fifth and rank among China’s top three online gaming operators by the end of 2008. Other plans include diversifying from IM and entertainment into e-mail and improving the search engine (soso.com).

source:

Tencent plots expansion, takes on Shanda (SZDaily June-9-2008)

Financial results 2007 

Tencent released the financial results for 2007 at the 19th of march 2008. Key numbers are:

• 300 million active IM accounts
  
• 741.7 registered QQ accounts
  
• 523.1 million USD revenue over 2007 (36% increase over 2006)

Most remarkable is the distribution of the revenues:

• Internet services (games, pets, etc): 344 million USD (66%)
• Mobile services: 110 million USD (21%)
• Online ads: 67 million USD (13%)

See this link for more indepth analysis:

QQ announces 2007 earnings | Facebook should look carefully

Tencent Announces 2008 Interim and Second Quarter Results  (pdf)

Highlights for the First Half of 2008:

• Total revenues were RMB3,032.7 million (USD442.1 million1), an increase of 84.8% over the firsthalf of year ended June 30, 2007 (“YoY”)
• Revenues from Internet value-added services (IVAS) were RMB2,035.8 million (USD296.8million), an increase of 94.2% YoY

External links 

By far the best source of information about Tencent/QQ by 'Plus Eight Star'.Very detailed and lots of good pictures to make it interesting to read:

http://www.plus8star.com/Inside_QQ_Sample.pdf