Discovering QQ

Many of my Chinese students have asked me to get a QQ account. At first I found this puzzling, as I had never heard of QQ, nor did I know how it would help me stay in touch with my students. 

So I did a google search and found this on Wikipedia -

Tencent QQ, generally referred to as QQ, is the most popular free instant messaging computer program in mainland China. As of July 11, 2011, the active QQ users accounts for QQ IM totaled 812.3 million

Jesus.