DOUGLAS Zhang describes himself as 'a QQ person through and through.'
A 'VIP' subscriber to QQ, China's most popular instant-messaging service, the 24-year-old Beijing information-technology professional has more than 100 QQ friends in his contacts list and keeps several premium QQ numbers, which each cost him 10 yuan ($1.43) a month. In addition to messaging, he reads the news on QQ.com and participates in discussions in one of the eight QQ chat groups he has joined.
'I log in once connected to the Internet, in the office and at home,' Mr. Zhang says. 'I spend over 10 hours on it every day. The real chatting with friends might only take around 10 minutes. I just want to be there.'
Lots of others want to be there, too. Of China's roughly 210 million Internet users, there are approximately 60 million instant-messaging, or IM, users, CCID Consulting reported in December. Many of them hold multiple accounts for different sets of friends and contacts, or because they have shed old online identities and taken on new ones. Unlike email services in China, IM accounts often don't require people to register with a real identity, though both email and IM are monitored by government censors.
Walk into any Internet cafe in China, and it's a good bet almost everybody will have an IM window open and will be chatting with friends, perhaps while playing an online game or conducting a search. In the office, the breeze of chat flows through the open IM window as people work their Excel spreadsheets. Last week, countless Chinese learned of the nation's massive earthquake through a flurry of online messages on QQ.
'Young Chinese people don't ask one another for email addresses. They ask for QQ numbers,' says Kaiser Kuo, group director for digital strategy for Ogilvy & Mather in Beijing. Shortly after the quake, Mr. Kuo himself started using the Twitter microblogging service, while his wife kept windows open for both QQ and MSN to share information widely.
The Chinese IM market is dominated by Tencent Holdings Inc., of Shenzhen, with its QQ platform. QQ's active accounts have reached 315 million, a figure that is boosted by people opening multiple accounts, according to data released by Analysys International last week. QQ is China's No. 1 IM service, with a 79.6% market share. The closest rival, Microsoft Corp.'s Microsoft Messenger, which mainly targets business users, had about 16.5 million active accounts by the first quarter.
Smaller players include POPO, from Netease.com Inc., Sina UC, from Sina Corp., and Google Talk, from Google Inc., all busily expanding their user groups. Earlier this year, Baidu Inc., China's top search engine, launched its own instant-messaging product, Baidu Hi.
It can be a lucrative space. Tencent recently reported that first-quarter profit jumped 84% from a year earlier, driven by a surge in Internet value-added services, including QQ. Revenue rose 85%. The company, about to become the first Chinese Internet stock in Hong Kong's blue-chip Hang Seng Index, is laying plans for a bold expansion.
Tencent monetizes its QQ brand aggressively. Formally launched in February 1999 as a simple instant-messaging platform, QQ has gradually evolved into a full social product with an array of services, including message boards, blog groups, chat groups and digital commodities. These include virtual clothes and furniture users can purchase with QQ coins -- a virtual currency Tencent invented that has taken on real market value -- to dress their avatars, or online personas, and decorate their digital houses. 
Many young Chinese grew up with the product, developing a QQ lifestyle and even a new online language, 'Language from Mars,' mainly used in QQ chatting and in Qzone, a multimedia blog service. (For example, 3Q means 'thank you.')
It is all going on in the context of a burgeoning Chinese Internet population, which rose 53% to 210 million at the end of 2007 from 137 million at the end of 2006, according to the state-owned China Internet Network Information Center. The Center puts China at just five million users short of surpassing the U.S. as the world's largest Internet market.
Those sorts of numbers are a magnet to foreign players, including social-networking sites. MySpace China, a joint venture in which News Corp., owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a stake, set up an office in Beijing last summer, and Facebook Inc. ramped up its move into the market in March by inviting its China-based users to help translate the site into Chinese.
But foreign companies eager for these eyeballs will have to adapt to a distinctive market. In the U.S., roughly 70% of Internet users are over the age of 30; in China, 70% are under 30. While America's Internet users are sending email messages and surfing for information on their personal computers, China's users are downloading video and music into their cellphones and MP3 players or posting on online message boards, with more than one-third of the nation's Internet users on the boards on a regular basis. The boards are home to vibrant online communities where friendships made online are extended offline.
Those habits have helped turn IM into a social-networking medium in China, despite the availability of proper social-networking sites such as Xiaonei.com. For example, Mr. Zhang, the Beijing IT specialist, prefers real-time conversation to Web page-style text communication, and says he gets a 'strong sense of presence' when chatting with friends on QQ, aware that on the other end someone is busy typing an answer.
Proper social-networking services are typically based on people using their real names to register, whereas Chinese love the Internet largely because they can express themselves anonymously, without fear of reprisal from government censors or the police. People usually choose not to include a real name in their email addresses and use online names when posting to bulletin boards far more commonly than in the U.S.
MySpace China's social-networking efforts focus on a 'sincere, equal, free and tolerant' Internet atmosphere where like-minded users can find one another more readily than through IM, says spokeswoman Julia Zhu. She adds that the company has a separate IM service 'to provide a tool of immediate communication to our users.'
Facebook had no specific comment on the challenges IM might present to the social-networking business in China.
If IM is a social creature for young people in China, it is also a serious business tool for them.
'Managers use it to manage their teams, and sales staff, for instance, will have a meeting with a prospective client, go back to the office, add them on QQ or MSN and then contact them and cultivate them as a contact or client after that,' says Mr. Kuo of Ogilvy.
In a company at which Mr. Zhang used to work, he recalls, 'we built a QQ chat group for people in the office to communicate. Whenever I had something to say, I said it in the QQ group, without really walking in the office. That saves time and energy!'
***分割符***
Douglas Zhang说，他是个彻头彻尾的“QQ族”。
QQ是中国最受欢迎的互联网即时通讯服务。24岁的北京IT人士Douglas就是它的一个贵宾会员。他的QQ上有100多个好友，他还有好几个超级QQ号，每个每月人民币10元（合1.43美元）。除了聊天&#12289;发讯息之外，他还在QQ.com上看新闻，参加他注册的一个QQ聊天群的讨论。他共加入了八个这样的聊天群。
Douglas说，每次上网我都会登录QQ，不管是在办公室还是在家。每天要挂在上面10多个小时，而每天跟朋友“动嘴”聊天的时间可能只有10分钟。我就是想呆在上面。
还有其他人也像Douglas一样对网上聊天爱不释手。CCID Consulting去年发表报告说，中国有大约2.1亿网民，其中大约有6,000万IM(网上即时讯息服务)用户。他们很多人有多个帐户，用于跟不同圈子的朋友和熟人联系，还有人会将旧帐户闲置，启用新帐户。虽然电子邮件和IM都受政府审查部门的监视，但IM帐户通常不采用实名制，而某些电子邮件服务需要用真名。
走进中国任何一家网吧，十有八九每个人都会开着一个IM窗口跟朋友聊天，可能是一边在网上玩游戏或查东西一边聊。在办公室，人们在处理Excel文件的同时可能也在聊天。上周，数不清的中国人就是在QQ上知道四川发生了大地震。
奥美(Ogilvy & Mather)中国数字行销策略总监郭怡广(Kaiser Kuo)说，中国年轻人一般互相之间不会问电子邮件地址，而是会问QQ号。这次地震发生后不久，郭怡广本人开始使用Twitter微博客服务，他太太则在电脑上一直开着QQ和MSN窗口，以便得到更多的消息。
中国IM市场的霸主是腾讯控股(Tencent Holdings)的QQ。它的活跃帐户已达3.15亿。据Analysys International上周发布的数据，腾讯的帐户数之所以膨胀到这么大的数字，是因为有人同时拥有数个帐户。QQ在中国市场的占有率达到了79.6%。紧随其后的是微软(Microsoft)的MSN，它的用户主要是商务人士，截至今年1季度，中国市场的MSN用户是1,650万。
排在它们后面的后来者包括网易的泡泡,新浪的Sina UC和谷歌(Google Inc.)的Google Talk，它们也都在积极扩大用户群。今年早些时候，中国最大的搜索引擎百度(Baidu Inc.)也推出了IM产品百度Hi。
这个领域可能存在着诱人的盈利空间。腾讯最近公布，一季度其利润额较上年同期增长了84%，这主要得益于互联网增值服务的大幅上升。同期，公司收入增长85%。腾讯还制定了大规模扩张计划。它的股票将成为被纳入恒生指数成份股的第一只中国大陆互联网公司股票。
腾讯正在大举收获其QQ品牌带来的成果。QQ最早是1999年2月推出的，当时还只是一个简单的IM平台，后来逐渐发展成一个设有多项服务的社交产品总汇，包括论坛&#12289;博客群&#12289;聊天群和数字化商品。这些商品包括虚拟服装和家具，用户可以用Q币购买这些物品来装扮网上人物&#12289;装饰数字居家。Q币是腾讯公司发明的一种虚拟货币，它像真实货币一样具有一定市场价值。
中国的许多年轻人随着QQ一起成长，形成了一种QQ式生活方式，甚至一套新的网上“火星语言”，即在QQ上及QQ的多媒体博客服务QQ空间(Qzone)上使用的语言。
所有这一切都是在中国网民人数大规模增长的背景下形成的。据官方机构中国互联网信息中心(China Internet Network Information Center)的数据，截至2007年底，中国网民数量较2006年的1.37亿人增长53%，至2.1亿人，与网民数量全球第一的美国只有500万人的差距。
这样的数字对国外同行是个极大的诱惑。网上社交网站MySpace（中国）去年夏天在北京成立了办事处，Facebook Inc. 3月份邀请其中国用户帮它将网站翻译成中文版，以此迅速切入中国市场。《华尔街日报》母公司新闻集团(News Corp.)持有MySpace（中国）股份。
不过，急切希望分享中国网民眼球的外资公司将不得不设法适应中国独特的互联网市场。在美国，超过七成网民的年龄在30岁以上，而中国刚好相反，30岁以下的人占了七成。美国网民在个人电脑上上网主要是为收发邮件和浏览信息，而中国网民会给手机和MP3下载视频&#12289;音乐，到论坛里发贴子，有超过三分之一的网民经常上论坛。论坛是网上各种活跃社区的大本营，人们在这里结识同好，并会在网下进一步发展友情。
这些习惯使IM成了中国的一种社交媒介，尽管有校内网(xiaonei.com)等很多专门的社交网络。前文提到的Douglas就更喜欢在网上即时聊天，而不喜欢采用网页风格的文字交流。他说，当他在网上通过QQ跟朋友聊天的时候，他会有一种强烈的“现场感”，他能感受到另一端的网友正在忙着敲键盘输入答话内容。
正常的社交网站通常需要用户实名注册，而中国人之所以热衷互联网，主要是因为在网上可以匿名表达自己的想法，不用担心被政府审查人员或警察抓小辫子。跟美国人相比，中国人在申请邮箱地址时通常不会用自己的真名，发贴子的时候也喜欢用网名。
MySpace（中国）发言人Julia Zhu说，MySpace希望在交友服务方面能营造一种“真诚&#12289;平等&#12289;自由和宽容”的氛围，让人们比用IM更容易发现同道中人。她补充道，公司还有单独的IM服务，为用户提供一种即时交流的工具。
Facebook对IM服务给中国的互联网社交业务带来的挑战没有发表具体评论。
对中国人来说，IM既是年轻人的一种社交途径，也是商务人士的严肃的业务工具。
奥美的郭怡广举例说，管理层会用IM来管理团队，销售人员会在与潜在客户开完会回到办公室后，把对方加到他的QQ或MSN联系人名单上，必要时很方便地联系他们。
Douglas回忆说，在他以前工作过的一家公司，他们曾在同事中间建立QQ聊天群，便于大家沟通。他说：有事要说的时候，我就会在QQ群里发言，不需要在办公室里来回走动。这样既省时又省力。
