Tencent Biography 1998-2016: Evolution of Chinese Internet Companies

Chapter 13 Users: Pony's Product Philosophy

A trot is almost the hallmark of an uninhibited horse.

——Da Vinci (Italian painter), "Painting Notes"

"Don't make me think!"

——Ma Huateng
"The child who sees only birds is a good student"

There is such a story in the Indian epic myth "Mahabharata" (Mahabharata):
The master Trona taught his students how to shoot arrows. When he arrived in the woods, he asked a student, "Have you seen any birds?"Answer, see.Ask again: Do you see the woods and me?A: I have seen them all.Ask another student: Do you see birds, trees and people?Answer: I only see birds.

Trona ordered him to shoot, and it hit.

Trona said the boy who saw only birds was a good student.

This is a story about focus.

From the first day when QQ was launched, Ma Huateng was the "good student who only saw birds".That bird is the user.

Ma Huateng doesn't seem to care much about "strategy" or "management" in general, at least on the surface.This observation may not be accurate. Looking at the growth history of Tencent, for a long time, the transformation and iteration driving force of this enterprise did not come from the established strategy, but the continuous innovation of products.And innovation does not come from the laboratory, but the ever-changing needs of the market.As early as 1998, Kevin Kelly foresaw this classic feature of Internet companies in the book "New Economy New Rules", which he called "rheology": the network economy has changed from a change to a state of flow, and the change This dynamic of overthrowing what has been established to provide a breeding ground for more innovations may be seen as "compound regeneration", which emerges from the edge of chaos.

In 2003, Tang Mu left Kingsoft and joined Tencent. In 2006, he was appointed as the general manager of Tencent User Research and Experience Design Center. He is the founder and director of Tencent User Research and Experience Design Center.He described the difference between Kingsoft and Tencent in product development as follows:
Software development is often measured in years.At the beginning of the year, the product manager wrote a big demand, and the project was started after all parties evaluated it.After several months of design and development, the test is carried out, and then iterates slowly.Although it sounds like a year is a long time, when the final project deadline was reached, everyone still shouted that there was not enough time.In the end, the project manager got stuck on time, version editing, and pressing, and all the remnants disappeared in the instant of pressing.In this way, a thing that we call software developed after a year, mixed with unfinished features, bugs to be solved, and UI that needs to be adjusted, is pressed into a disk for mass production, packaged and sent to consumers hand.

The production of Internet companies is a completely different scene. At the beginning of entering Tencent in 2003, I was shocked by the agility of this company - one version a month!I only have one to two weeks to do interface design, and most of the progress coincides with development.Product managers (if any) make requirements based on user feedback and competitors' situation, interface design and development are carried out at the same time, and testing time is even more negligible.In this way, a thing that we call Internet software developed after a month, mixed with more unfinished features, bugs to be solved, and UI that needs to be adjusted, is packaged on the server and provided on the Web. link to start downloading for the user.

The scenario described by Tang Mu is Tencent’s strategy to deal with changes: change with the changes, and there is never a certain way.

Ma Huateng explained Tencent's incremental innovation as "running in small steps, trial and error and iteration".In his opinion, every product update may not be perfect, but if you insist on discovering and correcting one or two small problems every day, you can basically polish your work in less than a year, and you will feel like a product. .

"He's a mail maniac"

The virtual Internet world is no different from the real world. Although it always presents a chaotic scene, it is a highly open structure full of creativity, surprise, freedom and potential.As Bakhtin revealed, such a world is "unending", and its continuous evolution relies on free creation on the one hand and proper restraint on the other.In such an ecological environment, the control of trends and details are two equally important abilities.

Ma Huateng said that Chen is "a person who is not good at words". The method he uses to promote iterative evolution is to personally participate in almost all product development, and then play "guiding chess" by sending emails. He can be regarded as China's leading "Mailmaniacs".

All the Tencent people I interviewed were amazed by Ma Huateng's "magic skills in posting", and even found it incredible.Tencent is known for its super long product line, but Ma Huateng can pay attention to almost all the details of iterations.

Zheng Zhihao, who once presided over the development of QQ Zone, told me that there were at least 2000 emails between Ma Huateng and his team; Over a year and a half, more than 2007 emails were exchanged with his team.

A programmer told me about this experience: Once, he made a PPT and sent it to Ma Huateng at two o'clock in the middle of the night. Suggested revisions are returned.Gu Sibin, who was in charge of the QQ membership business, recalled that Ma Huateng was very sensitive to the font, byte, size, and color of the page.Once, he received an email, and Ma Huateng pointed out that there seemed to be a problem with the spacing between two words.

There is a joke that is widely circulated among Tencent people: I came to the company one morning and found an email sent by Pony at 4:10 in the morning. The president quickly replied to the email, the vice president replied at 12:3, and several general managers replied at 10:18. After the conclusion of the discussion, by [-] pm, the technical plan was ready, and at [-] pm, the product manager sent out the detailed schedule of the project, which took a total of [-] hours.Therefore, Zhang Zhidong believes: "Tencent's product iteration is a process that is pushed by Ma Huateng's email."

It can be seen from these examples that without in-depth insight into user needs, there will be no rapid product improvement response.Henry Ford once said: "The secret of success is to put your feet in other people's shoes, and then consider things from the perspective of others. Service is such a spirit, and you can see the whole world from the standpoint of customers." See Come on, it's an open secret to think about business from the customer's point of view.

I once asked Ma Huateng: "How do you know so many products?"

His answer seems to be nothing special:
One, take turns using each product on a daily basis, like a normal user.

"The easiest way to find out the shortcomings of the product is to use your product every day. Product managers can only find out the shortcomings of the product if they are more sensitive. I often find it strange that some product managers say that they can't find the problem. I believe that, If the product manager can insist on using the product for three months when the product is launched, he will definitely find many problems. And the problem is limited. If you find one a day and solve it, you will slowly approach the point of "very word of mouth". Don't Because the work does not have technical content, do not do it. Many good products are made by this method. Our leaders not only have to arrange the people below to do it, but also must do it themselves. These are not difficult, the key is to persist , you must think in your heart 'If you don't try it this weekend, something will happen' until a product is basically formed."

Second, I often go to various product forums to "dive" and hear different voices and feedback.

"Where do we find problems? Forums, blogs, RSS subscriptions. High-end users don't bother to go to forums to ask questions. We who make products have to take the initiative to find out, check and search, and then actively contact users to help solve them. Some are indeed caused by users' mistakes, and some are our own problems. We must have a good attitude and hope that users can find out the problems and we will solve them. Even if the problem is small, it is a big thing to solve. Some things do Yes, it works quickly. You need to pay attention to multiple aspects, and often check your operations. For example, if your product is slow, users will not care about your IDC (Internet Data Center) or other reasons, but only know that your speed is slow.” Although the company has no explicit requirements, Tencent's engineers have formed a habit of taking turns monitoring and replying to user opinions that appear on the Internet every two hours.

在马化腾的推动下，腾讯形成了一个“10/100/1000法则”：产品经理每个月必须做10个用户调查，关注100个用户博客，收集反馈1000个用户体验。

In Ma Huateng's own words, "This method looks a bit stupid, but it works."

The speed of becoming an "idiot-level user" in an instant
Zhang Xiaolong is a man who is not good at words. In March 2005, after Foxmail was fully acquired by Tencent, Ma Huateng invited him to dinner. This was the first time they met.

In an interview with me in 2012, Xiaolong recalled a detail: During the M&A negotiations, people from Tencent, including Zhang Xiaolong himself, did not quite understand why Ma Huateng wanted to acquire Foxmail. Even if they had dinner together, it was not convenient to ask .However, Zhang Xiaolong was deeply impressed by what Ma Huateng said. He said: "Foxmail's experience is very good. We also do it ourselves, but we find that we can't do it well."

Zhang Xiaolong said to me: "At that time, few people talked about user experience. When Pony said this word, I didn't even realize it. Why do you say that Foxmail's experience is good? I am a software person, and I think That's how it should be done. After entering Tencent, I gradually realized that not all people who make software know how to do it. When I was working on Foxmail, I unconsciously simulated user behavior, but I didn't know it was called user experience. "

Zhang Xiaolong merged into Tencent with a team of less than 20 people and was ordered to rebuild QQ mailbox. "When we took over the mailbox, QQ mailbox had only tens of thousands of visits per day. No one in the company was in charge of this business anymore, and no one even managed the mailbox code." Zhang Xiaolong led his small team to rebuild the entire system However, in the first two years, Zhang Xiaolong's work was very difficult.The new version of QQ mailbox is a complicated and bulky guy. Zhang Xiaolong later admitted: "In the first two years after joining Tencent, I felt that I should be a manager, and the product matters should be done by the team members. To be honest, I personally didn’t pay much attention to its experience, and I seldom participated in the design of the product, and it turned out to be a big problem.”

By October 2006, Zhang Xiaolong's team decided to abandon the previous complicated route and transform into a light and simplified version.This time, Zhang Xiaolong completely changed his style and returned to the front line. "Starting from the minimalist version, I really put myself into making some product experiences that I have mastered. I can do what I say. Any changes to any element must be approved by me. I will participate in every aspect of this product. in a functional experience."

The minimalist version maintains an extremely fast iteration rhythm, and a new version will be released every two weeks, up to three weeks.

In this rapid iteration, Ma Huateng also invested great enthusiasm.In the field of mailboxes, his opponent is Ding Lei, a netizen from Huiduo.com many years ago. Netease started from mailboxes and formed a great competitive advantage.Ma Huateng is deeply involved in the product experience, and his method is quite simple, which is to use it repeatedly, and constantly propose details that need to be improved during use.

"Many people in the industry say that we imitate Gmail. This is a superficial view. They have not studied our products carefully, but only look at the interface. Gmail is divided into left and right. We are also divided into left and right. In fact, in terms of experience and details, we There is a big transcendence." Zhang Xiaolong said.

Zhang Xiaolong also cited a few examples: "An innovation that has gained wide reputation for QQ mailbox is the ability to send large-capacity attachments. Unlike other mailboxes that can only send attachments of about 5M, QQ mailbox has expanded the attachment capacity to 1G. This function has been welcomed by many office white-collar workers. Gmail did not have this function until it exited the Chinese market. There is also such as 'sending status query'. Once you send an email, you can see whether the email has been sent. On the server of the other party, this was first made by Tencent, and later NetEase followed suit. Another example is the "send separately" function. I send a New Year greeting card to 100 people at the same time, but the receiver sees the status of sending it separately , he will have a sense of exclusiveness."

I asked Zhang Xiaolong: "Did the ideas for these functions come from user research?"

His answer was unexpected: "Most innovations are not the result of research, but the result of our own repeated experience."

By the second quarter of 2008, according to iResearch's third-party data, the number of users of QQ mailboxes exceeded that of Netease mailboxes, which was almost unthinkable two years ago.By the end of the year, Ma Huateng awarded the annual Tencent Innovation Award to the QQ mailbox team.In the following year or so, QQ mailbox users have maintained a rapid growth trend. At midnight on June 2010, 6, Ma Huateng posted a message on Tencent Weibo with unconcealed excitement: "The QQmail team is the pride and role model of Tencent. I hope everyone will provide more suggestions and feedback. Be sure to respond quickly!"

This is a particularly classic case of Tencent's successful counterattack relying on user experience tactics.

In the interviews with Ma Huateng and Zhang Xiaolong, I asked a question: What kind of behavior is "user experience"?
Ma Huateng's answer is: "Internet-based products are not like traditional software development, which can be launched immediately after burning a CD. We are always a Beta version, and we need to upgrade quickly, maybe every two or three days. This requires constant changes. And constantly listen to feedback from forums and users, and then decide the direction behind you. Therefore, product managers must regard themselves as picky users.”

Zhang Xiaolong's explanation is more interesting: "That is the speed of becoming an 'idiot-level user' in an instant."

He half-jokingly said to me that Jobs could turn himself into an "idiot" within 1 second. Of course we are not as good as him, but we must make ourselves an "idiot".

Ma Huateng's first product presentation

In October 2008, at the awarding ceremony for the Tencent Innovation Award to the QQ Mailbox team, Xiong Minghua, then co-CTO, said to Ma Huateng: "Can you give a speech?" Brother Ma looked embarrassed, and Xiong Minghua smiled Said: "Let me prepare 'ingredients' for you."

In the next few days, Xiong Minghua asked people to summarize more than 1000 emails proposed by Ma Huateng and Guangzhou R&D Institute in the process of developing QQ mailboxes into a PPT, and "forced" Ma Huateng to give a speech at the company's product technology summit. "He spoke very successfully."

Ma Huateng's speech has been widely circulated on the Internet, and this is the first time he has systematically expounded his product views in a semi-public setting.

About "Core Competence"——

Any product has core functions, and its purpose is to help users and solve their needs in a certain aspect, such as saving time, solving problems, and improving efficiency.Core competencies must be maximized.Think more about how to achieve differentiation through technology, so that others cannot do it, or it will take a year and a half to catch up.

When many users commented on QQ mailboxes, they said that the only reason for using QQ is to transfer files quickly and have groups. Then this is our advantage, and we must maximize this advantage.For example, transferring files offline is a transfer station in the form of email. Even if it is a very large file, it is not difficult. The key is to do it.Although there may not be many users who actually use it, users will say that I want to upload large files, but I can’t find a place to upload them after searching for a long time. So our word of mouth came.

When it comes to core capabilities, we must first have a technological breakthrough.We can't do what others have and I have, otherwise we will always rank second and third. Although there are opportunities, but the lack of surprise when it comes out for the first time, it will lose the user's sense of identity.At this time, the first thing you should pay attention to is the hard index of your product.When designing and developing, you have to take into account that the outside world will compare it with competitors.

To become big, the first thing you need to consider is how to make others unable to catch up.We cannot waste the accumulation of so many years in the Internet data center, such as high-speed upload and MAN transfer station, and then we may find new problems, if it is not email, how to realize it on IM.Our purpose is to make users feel super fast and fast, and to make the user experience very good, all of which require a lot of technology and background to cooperate.

Product updates and upgrades require the cooperation of product managers, but our product managers do not have many R&D backgrounds.Products and services require a lot of technical background support. We hope that the product manager is very experienced, and it is best to be promoted from a technical research and development personnel who have done front-end and back-end development.It is best to hand over a good product to a person with technical ability and experience, which will make everyone feel more at ease.If the product manager is not qualified, let many brothers accompany him to work, and it turns out that the direction is wrong, which is very wasteful and dampens the morale of the team.

About "Word of Mouth"——

Personalized service is not a popular service, but also a word of mouth.

When a product has no reputation, don't abuse the platform.Our product manager energy seems to be well allocated, 50% product, 50% marketing, of course, if you control the basic links well, this is of course possible.But most of the time our people can't do well at the first point.If your strength and chance of winning are less than 70% or 80%, then focus on the core.Consider these when your product has gained a good reputation and is on the rise.

Product managers should focus on the most core strategic points that can win word-of-mouth from users. If this is not done well, the result will only be to disappoint users, and then spend more energy to make up for it. This is not worth the candle.When users are growing automatically (users will actively recommend friends to use our products), don't bother users, otherwise it may be doing bad things with good intentions.At this time, every thing you do and every thing you add must be carefully considered. It is really a constructive way to increase the word-of-mouth of the product.When the user's word-of-mouth is broken, it is difficult to bring the user back.

Adding functions requires skills in managing and controlling functions.After the core functions are completed, common functions should be gradually completed.Product innovation in local and small areas should never be satisfied.As a product with a good reputation, every added function must be carefully considered, whether this function will bring confusion to 10% of users when it brings good impressions to 90% of users.Be smart when there is conflict and avoid it on a case-by-case basis.Each function does not necessarily have to be used a lot to be good, but the people who use it think that it is really good.

When doing product development, it is necessary to have a strong R&D mechanism guarantee, which can make product development more agile and faster.Even big projects need to be flexible.It cannot be said that I will show you something after waiting 3 months. At this time, the competitors have already gone out and I don’t know how far away.

To make products and build word-of-mouth, we must pay attention to the direction that high-end users and opinion leaders pay attention to.In the past, our idea was to focus on the big and let go of the small to meet the needs of most "novice" users.But looking at it now, the feelings of high-end users are the real word-of-mouth.

About "Experience Iteration"——

The product manager should regard himself as a "most picky user".Our energy for making products is limited, and there are many interactive contents, so we must focus on the most common one.The places with the largest traffic and usage must be considered, and they must be regulated so that users can use them comfortably.You have to think about the feeling and touch, and think about improving if you are confused, such as moving the mouse less, clicking quickly, and so on.

Developers should think about the product with their heart, not a business-like attitude.You need to know that users and peers will pay attention to your products. Under this drive, developers must be responsible and take the initiative to complete.It cannot be said to wait until the products are ready and sent to the front of the assembly line. 40% to 50% of the final experience of the product should be determined by the developer.Product personnel should not be jealous that some work is designed by developers. Only in this way can the team participate together, otherwise the product will be delayed.

About "Detail Aesthetics"——

For example, where to put the "Back" button of the mailbox, whether to put it on the right or left, everyone should think about how to put it better, and then go online for testing after thinking about it.Sending a letter to the same user, how to choose the most recently used account by default when the user has multiple mailboxes, these requirements are very small, but if you really do it, the user will say yes, although he may not be able to say Where is the problem.

The products developed should conform to the usage habits of users. For example, more people are used to copying things with keyboard operations when writing emails. Although it is technically difficult to implement, it can be solved.The same is true for the sensitivity and convenience of mouse feedback.

In terms of design, we should stick to a few points:

- do not force the user;

——Do not harass 1% of users for 99% of needs;
——A touch of fine arts, click to stop;
——You can’t deliberately cater to the younger age.

In terms of the overall structure and operation of the product, the following strategies can be adopted:
- Interactive feature: "Don't make me think!" (Don't make me think!)

——Art presentation: "As simple as possible."

—— Product Design: "Let the function exist in the invisible."

——Operation requirements: "Instability will fall short!"

——Overall requirements: "Fast, stable, powerful, and good experience!"

——Discover demand: read BBS and Blog frequently.

Although Ma Huateng's speech was titled "User Experience of QQ Mailbox", it contained almost all of his product philosophy, and many concepts mentioned in it, such as "word-of-mouth creation", "speed", "extreme", "details" " "Single-point breakthrough" and so on, later became the standard language of Internet products.

For quite a long time, Chinese Internet entrepreneurs have often talked about trends, strategies, and responsibilities of the times, but no one has ever made such a focused and subversive elaboration on the product itself in the attitude of a "product manager". In 2008, Ma Huateng was still ashamed to speak publicly in front of the public, but he did create a fresh discourse mode in this speech, which will become popular in a few years.

Feedback system under big data

Under the personal promotion of Ma Huateng, the "email maniac", the product philosophy of "small steps, trial and error iteration" and "close to users, experience first" has penetrated into the soul of Tencent. With the assistance, Tencent further formed an institutionalized and platform-based product testing and feedback system.

Since 2005, Ma Huateng has asked the supervisors of each business line to send him and Zhang Zhidong an email reflecting business indicators every day, including: How many monthly subscription users are there?How much did it increase?How much did it decrease?Compared with the same day last week, or compared with the same day last month, how much did it rise or fall?What's the matter?
"This is something that needs to be paid attention to every day. If you, as a manager, don't look at these things or take a long time to look at them, you will miss a lot of things, or your reaction speed will be much slower." Ma Huateng said.

In 2008, Ma Huateng introduced the concept of digital management into the operation and management of Tencent's portal website. "The original advertisement was a bit extensive, and it was often at the end of the quarter that we started to rush for performance and find an agent. Since this year, there has been a letter every day. How much advertising resources are consumed, how much prime positions are consumed, etc. Why is this happening? In the past, they did not establish such a system. This year, we began to ask them to read it every day. Every letter will see this number. It is very important to cultivate a sense of digital operation. In this way, everyone will not be superfluous and find all kinds of reasons to evade in the end. If there is something that should be known in advance, you should ask more. I hope to rely on this This kind of thinking can bring together every piece of our business.”

In order to answer the ultimate question of user experience "what do users really need", Tencent has specially built a secret weapon: the Support product exchange platform. Support is a platform for a large number of users to directly communicate with product managers. Product managers obtain users' needs and ideas by browsing their own product communication pages every day.Let users speak for themselves with "I'm going to say something."

Tencent even took out all the user experience personnel on each product line and set up a company-level department - the user experience and research department. It was built from a strategic height. At the beginning, there were a dozen people, and later it reached nearly a hundred people. scale.After the product is officially launched, the truly massive user experience collection begins.For each product, Tencent provides user feedback areas such as official blogs and product forums.In order to get more user feedback, Tencent even set up a "Feedback" button in the most conspicuous place.The product forums of other companies rarely raise them to a strategic level like Tencent.

After becoming the Internet company with the largest number of users, the amount of user data that Tencent possesses has become increasingly abundant. Mining these data has become a heavy weapon that Tencent has tried repeatedly in the expansion of multiple businesses.Some analysts even said that "data mining" is Tencent's most threshold technology.The deeper part of data mining is Tencent's accumulation in the Internet data center, such as the background and basic technical support for high-speed uploading and large-capacity mail transmission. In 2007, Tencent established the Tencent Research Institute, which has six research directions, among which, discovering user feedback and needs through data mining is one of them.

According to Zhang Zhidong, around 2014, data mining also had a special force: the T4 expert group. T4 is an expert engineer. In Tencent’s technical career path, there are 6 levels in total, from T1 (engineer) to T6 (chief scientist). T4 is a mainstay. It must be elected by the order of 4 million users .Once a major product problem is encountered, a special team composed of T[-] will join, and their experience of billions of users will play a role.

Data mining of users has played a big role in the rise of Tencent's online games.

Tencent started to operate online games in 2003, and encountered setbacks. It was not until 2008 that Tencent found suitable Korean game works in multiple market segments.In the process of representing Korean games, Tencent proposed to intervene in the research and development of the represented games.For example, based on the mining data of the users of "Cross Fire", Tencent believes that the bullets designed by the original Korean side have realistic effects after being fired, but they are not suitable for Chinese users.Users are more excited about the "relatively refreshing, fast-paced, and distinctive" ballistic design designed by Tencent.The final results showed that Tencent was right.

(End of this chapter)