They convey a sense of playfulness among social media users who may be acquaintances or strangers to each other. The Chinese characters and their bracketed annotations under study, despite their one-to-one matching in sequence, never match each other either in meaning or in pronunciation. Since 2013, ICQ has 11 million monthly users.This paper explores social bonding in language play via the construction of ‘Chinese character (annotation)’ on two major social media platforms (Sina Weibo and WeChat) in China. At the time of the Mail.Ru acquisition in 2010, there were around 42 million daily users. ICQ became the first widely adopted IM platform.Īt its peak around 2001, ICQ had more than 100 million accounts registered. ICQ was among the first stand-alone instant messenger (IM)-while real-time chat was not in itself new ( Internet Relay Chat (IRC) being the most common platform at the time), the concept of a fully centralized service with individual user accounts focused on one-on-one conversations set the blueprint for later instant messaging services like AIM, and its influence is seen in modern social media applications. The ICQ client application and service were initially released in November 1996, freely available to download.

Originally developed by the Israeli company Mirabilis in 1996, the client was bought by AOL in 1998, and then by Mail.Ru Group in 2010. The name ICQ derives from the English phrase 'I Seek You'. ICQ is a cross-platform instant messaging and VoIP client.

Icq app change name