Tencent Biography 1998-2016: Evolution of Chinese Internet Companies

Chapter 15 Opening Up: New Challenges and Capabilities

In the past, we were always thinking about what was right.But now, we need to think more about what is acceptable.

——Ma Huateng, "Mail to All Employees"

The faster an industry develops, the sooner its business model will reach its limit, so the current parabola of success is often a narrow peak.

--Gary Hammer (American business strategist), "The Future of Management"

"Opening the Door to the Future"

After describing the rise and fall of many human civilizations, British historian Toynbee raised a meaningful question: How long does it take for a creative few who have successfully responded to a challenge to go through a spiritual process? To be born again, to qualify myself for the next challenge, and the next?

An enterprise is an object with thoughts and desires. Years endow it with organizational and conceptual outlines and change them at any time. This feeling is very wonderful. Facing the anxiety of uncertainty and the challenge of surpassing oneself, entrepreneurs part of life.

In October 2009, a reporter from "Chinese Entrepreneur" interviewed Ma Huateng and asked: "What is the most unacceptable misunderstanding from the outside world?"

After thinking for a long time, Ma Huateng replied: "If something goes wrong with the product, a lot of people scold you."

Obviously, at this time, Xiao Ma still regards himself as a "product manager", and believes from the bottom of his heart that as long as the product is made to the extreme, he can win users, and most other external public opinion intrusions can be ignored.

However, only one year later, after experiencing the "baptism" of the 3Q war, Ma Huateng's attitude has undergone a great change. On the evening of November 2010, 11, he issued a letter to all employees via internal mail, saying: "In the past, we always thought about what is right. But now, we need to think more about what can be recognized. of."

This day is the 12th anniversary of Tencent's founding. The company held a large-scale celebration with 4000 people. Ma Huateng gave an impromptu speech. Although the scene was warm and grand, he still seemed to have more to say.After the celebration, Ma Huateng did not go home or have a party like others. He drove back to the office and sent an email titled "Opening the Door to the Future" two hours later.

"I am a person who is not good at words, so I choose to communicate with everyone by email." Ma Huateng used a very frank opening statement, and then he wrote:
Since the establishment of the company, we have never encountered such a huge security crisis.During this time, we spent many sleepless days and nights together.When we look back at these days and nights, what we may remember is fatigue, grievance, helplessness, and the feeling of weakness that goes deep into the bone marrow.But I would say that in 12 more years we will be hating off to this date.

As a company leader, it is personally necessary for me to reflect at this moment and share these reflections with everyone.

1. It's not the worst moment
Some people may think that Tencent is going through the most dangerous challenge ever.But what I want to say is that real crises never come from outside.Only when we ignore the user experience will we encounter a real crisis.Only when one day Tencent loses its culture of conscientiousness and conscientious service to users, will this be a real disaster.

2. There is no best moment
In the past 12 years, my deepest experience is that Tencent has never had a day when it can sit back and relax, and every moment may be the most dangerous moment. Over the past 12 years, we have been walking on eggshells every day, always worrying that an omission will give us a fatal blow at any time, and always worrying that users will abandon us.

3. Let's let go of our anger

During this period of time, a feeling of common hatred and hatred has been fermented within the company, and many people have identified 360 as the enemy.But history throughout the ages tells us that only ourselves can be burned by anger.If there is no 360 attack, we will not have so much pain, and we will not have so much reflection, so we will not have so many insights today.Maybe one day in the future, when we reach a new height, we should thank today's opponents for tempering us.

4. Let's stay in awe

In the past, we were always thinking about what was right.But now, we need to think more about what is acceptable.In the past, while pursuing user value, we also enjoyed the speed and passion towards success.But now, we need to implant more awe of the public, the industry, and the future in the culture.

5. Let's open the door to the future
Now is the time for us to end this strife and open the door to the future.At this moment we stand at the starting point of another 12 years.This moment is also an opportunity for us to seize the opportunity and complete a transformation.

At the end of the email, Ma Huateng promised to "open up", which was the first time that Tencent's decision-makers defined it as a strategic action.

"Maybe I can't tell you what changes will happen today, but we will try to inject more open and sharing elements into Tencent's future development. We will actively promote the opening of the platform and pay attention to the harmony of the industrial chain, because Tencent My dream is not to become the strongest and largest company, but the most respected company.”

"Ma Ba Tiao" and the half-year strategic transformation preparation period

In Liu Chiping's memory, at the end of 2010, Ma Huateng "suddenly became very fond of communicating with people", and the topics of conversation were also very different from before. He even invited media experts to the general office meeting to share public relations and Communication skills that were unimaginable before.

On December 12, Ma Huateng was invited to participate in the 5 (Ninth) Annual Conference of Chinese Business Leaders, and delivered a speech entitled "2010 Outlines on the Future of the Internet".

What surprised the attendees was that Ma Huateng, who seldom expounded his business ideas publicly, not only brought a well-prepared and well-organized speech, but also learned humor and self-deprecation.In the first minute of his speech, the audience laughed heartily. He said: "The topic of my speech this afternoon is 'Eight Theses on Internet Problems'. People will think that I am imitating Martin Luther's religious reformation. The 1 theses proposed at the time. Originally, we were also planning to write 8 theses, but due to time constraints, it only took 95 minutes, so I made a decision that was not very difficult and decided to shorten it to 95."

The content of Ma Huateng's speech was later summarized by the media as "Ma Eight Articles":
[-]. The Internet is about to step out of the "Three Gorges Era" in its history, with more passion and greater power.

When any new tool appears, it will always arouse the surprise of the society, as well as a lot of attention, and it will be all the rage.This process is like the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River. After this stage passes, the freshness gradually loses.However, this has promoted the reshaping of the social structure, and the power of innovation will come overwhelmingly.A sign of this turning point is that every citizen can use the Internet skillfully as a tool.

Second, the client will no longer be important, and the value of the upstream industry will rise again.

Looking back, many people think that Tencent has achieved a lot of success because it has a QQ client software.We can reach users very conveniently. We have many users who can push any product successfully. This is actually a channel through which we can easily reach users.But in the future we feel this trend, or this kind of story will no longer exist.In the Internet, the era of strong channels will pass sooner or later.Simply put, the value chain is moving upstream in the Internet industry chain.In other words, if people only rely on your client in the future, the company will enter a major crisis.

[-]. "Monopoly" is an annoying crime, but sometimes it is indeed a hypothetical crime.

Many so-called monopoly companies are actually still facing a great crisis when the industry is constantly changing.In other words, in an industry where value changes rapidly, no company can sit back and relax.Therefore, to challenge Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent, some people say that they are three big mountains. The effective way is not to build a similar platform to form a monopoly, but to be able to adapt and form a good industrial chain. This is a good one. method.

[-]. Those who intercept and kill channels are only "assassins", and those who occupy the source are "revolutionaries".

The Internet will no longer exist as an independent industry, it will be integrated into traditional industries.Under the influence of the Internet, the upstream of the industrial chain will become more and more important.In other words, what kind of products and services you have is the most important thing, not what kind of channel you have.The outside world has always had a misunderstanding of Tencent, saying that our core value is to have QQ and channels.In fact, we realized a long time ago that this is unsustainable.Therefore, we began to make every effort to build the value source of the industrial chain, that is to say, you must have very good products and services, as well as applications.

[-]. The advertising model is the product of the "product economy", and the intellectual property model is the darling of the "experience economy".

In the past product economy era, products and attention were separated, that is to say, when selling products, in order to gain popularity and reputation, we had to go to the media to buy attention. This is the essence of advertising.But now we see that when the product economy is gradually evolving into the experience economy, the unique experience will become a source of value for all industries, which also opens up an infinite space for industrial value-added.In the era of product economy, media content is an independent industry, that is to say, it provides a carrier for advertisements.Then, in the era of experience economy, media content will be fully integrated into other industries and become a source of value.

[-]. Don't be intimidated by "free".With "scarcity", you have the weapon to break the spell of free.

There are three ways to create scarcity.First, there must be a long-term substantial brand investment.Second, to create a unique experience, such as Apple's iPhone, through an integrated way to integrate many technologies together to create a very good unique experience.Each of its technologies is not a high-end technology in the eyes of other manufacturers. The key is to integrate it into an experience, which is a scarcity.The third is to create stars.

[-]. The product economy binds people, and the Internet economy will liberate people.

One of the missions of the Internet is to transform the traditional material-based economy and free people from the shackles of organizations.In other words, in the future world of the Internet, people with unique charm and independence will become the ultimate source and the ultimate winner.Aggregating more personal values, providing a platform for more people's self-realization, and condensing personality charm and innovative potential into huge commercial value is where the future of the Internet will come in handy, and it is also one of Tencent's visions.Only when the value of people is released, can industrial upgrading take place and a stable social structure emerge. This is the contribution China's Internet should be able to make.

[-]. In the era of "cloud organization", a "great company" is not necessarily a "big company".

"Cloud" is the form of the future society and a way of aggregation of social resources, that is to say, it usually exists in the form of water molecules. When integration is required, once the conditions are ripe, a "cloud" will be formed, and it will disperse after the task is completed. and go.Such an organizational form may be a normal state of the Internet in the future.Openness and sharing in the eyes of Tencent, in simple terms, is to focus on releasing the value of people, take personal resources as the foothold, use cloud organizations to gather, and use cloud innovation to promote.

At the end of his speech, Ma Huateng announced: "Starting from today—December 12, Tencent will enter a half-year strategic transformation preparation period. The direction of transformation is the eight themes mentioned above. Suggestions, advice and criticism from all walks of life, the principle of transformation is the openness and sharing just mentioned.”

"Diagnosing Tencent": Ten Immortal Meetings

After the Spring Festival in 2011, under the leadership of the public relations department, Tencent organized 10 expert seminars in Beijing, Sanya, Hangzhou and other cities. The theme was "Diagnosing Tencent". A total of 72 Internet experts participated in the seminars.Ma Huateng asked all Tencent executives to participate in one of the games. This is not only an open gesture, but also really hopes to hear voices that have never been heard.

Ma Huateng wrote in the preface to the book "Looking at Tencent under X-rays" which was later compiled and published: "There are always countless trails in the forest in front of us, and those things we already have must be tested in a new strategy. , Which ones are the basis for continued development, and which ones are the drag on the journey, it is actually difficult to distinguish."

"I didn't expect Tencent to make such a move. If it was Microsoft, I think its typical reaction to something similar would be to defend itself, mobilize all forces, open a thousand mouths, and prove itself correct." Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Jiang Qiping, secretary-general of the research center, recalled, “The scene of diagnosing Tencent can be described as a barrage of guns. I saw that many people were addicted to their mouths and experienced a kind of pleasure. Mouth, like a defendant who doesn't defend himself."

Among the 72 experts, some have cooperation and contacts with Tencent of varying lengths, while others are very sharp critics.At the diagnostic meeting in Beijing, an observer who had been bombarding Tencent in the media for a long time rushed over, sat down and spoke very intensely for half an hour, and then left in a hurry.Such a scene happened more than once, but everyone felt the face-to-face communication and Tencent's sincerity.

Cheng Lingfeng, a former employee of Tencent who participated in the diagnostic meeting, later recalled a detail: Zhang Zhidong spoke after the guests, and the first sentence at the beginning was "I have been taking notes. I wrote 3 pages, and my hands were sore." Said while shaking the hand holding the pen. Yin Sheng, the former deputy editor-in-chief of the Chinese version of "Forbes", leaned his head and said, "Your boss is real."

The themes of the diagnostic meeting consisted of three topics: public responsibility and reputation, industry openness and monopoly, and problems of innovation and imitation.It can be said that almost all the most important Internet observers in China at that time participated in this "fairy meeting". Due to the sharpness of the topics and the freshness of the cases, everyone's discussions appeared to be very free and in-depth. The difficulties and problems of the Chinese Internet , without exception, were involved in the venue.

A very important consensus is that Tencent is already the largest Internet company, so the responsibilities it needs to bear have become even more important. "The problem lies in the fact that the core decision-makers have insufficient judgment on industry trends, and there is an illusion about the entire industry and the market. ".

Hu Yanping, founder of DCCI Internet Data Center, pointed out that the entire Internet is currently changing, and the Internet system is rapidly changing from closed to open.At the same time, the competition among large enterprises has shifted from product service competition to platform-level competition. The largest and best enterprises must not be companies that provide more products and services by themselves, but connect the entire Internet and build the entire Internet through their own open platforms. , Organized enterprises.Tencent fully has this condition, and may have an advantage over other companies, but Tencent's pace in this area is too slow.

Liu Chiping, President of Tencent, who has always been cautious, conducted a larger-scale self-criticism from the perspective of operation strategy at the diagnosis meeting. He believed that Tencent was a bit "work obsessive-compulsive disorder" - in many years of development, Tencent has always wanted to play a waiter want to please users, and hope to take everything into their own hands and provide users with a variety of services. "It may have done a good job at the beginning, but as users' needs become more and more diversified and individualized, It is difficult for an enterprise to take care of all services.”

Wu Bofan, editor-in-chief of "21st Century Business Review", echoed Liu Chiping's point of view, and even more sharply believed that there is an "imperial thinking" in Tencent's thinking mode. "Like the Mongolian Empire, the territory is very large, but the management radius is not large enough, and it may expand very quickly. , but due to the asymmetry of the management radius, it will encounter a serious crisis in a short period of time, and even be completely disintegrated at a certain point.”

These same judgments and worries made by external experts and internal executives undoubtedly had a conceptual impact on decision-makers. Ma Huateng later put forward a new strategic proposition of "connecting everything", which is consistent with the views in this series of diagnostic meetings. Outbreaks are highly correlated.

At the diagnostic meeting, another heatedly discussed proposition was about innovation: "Is Tencent a Shanzhai company?"

In the eyes of outsiders, Tencent's innovation model is: take IM as the core, form a huge user base, and thus enter many application markets. Experience pushed to the extreme.Miao Deyu took the PPT courses and tutorials of some product managers of Tencent as an example, and believed that many product managers of Tencent teach people how to grasp the success of other people's products and carry out secondary micro-innovation. It is an out-and-out copycat imitation spirit, and it has been carried forward within Tencent."

The controversy over this follow-up strategy has never ceased, and it is also the successful specimen path of almost all Chinese Internet companies in the past 10 years.At the diagnostic meeting, the discussion of the experts did not fall into a moral critique of this model. On the contrary, they extended the tentacles of the rebuttal to the forefront of the growth of the Internet.There are three propositions put forward, which will still be meaningful many years from now.

First, the experts discussed the differences between the Internet in China and the Internet in the United States, and then proposed the possibility of innovation in consumption patterns and experience methods.

Second, they believe that the era of overly catering to users is over, "no one knows what will be the mainstream in the future, or there will be no mainstream at all." Therefore, Internet companies should focus their strategic appeals on creating demand.

Third, it is the values ​​that can truly lead Chinese Internet companies to become the kings of innovation, rather than various practical skills. Google didn’t talk about changing the world, the first is not to be evil, which is actually very revolutionary and the essence of the Internet.”

The discussion of "Diagnosing Tencent" started from the 3Q war and Tencent's development strategy, and involved all the major propositions of China's Internet growth. Some of them have relatively clear answers, some are still very vague, and some are themselves uncertain product of sex.In the not-so-long history of China's Internet, these 10 diagnoses will have very striking ideological value.

Open Capability: Capital and Flow

A mature business practitioner should have two firm and strong, but also contradictory creeds: you must destroy the original order and moral rules, and at the same time, you must devote yourself to the reconstruction of order and rules. Consequence bearers and "heirs to the estate".The art of business is to feel deeply this conflicting desire, but also to go about your business with equanimity.

In 2011, Ma Huateng began to learn such abilities.At the diagnosis meeting, he made a speech like this: "Openness and sharing are not a slogan, nor is it a simple concept. Openness is often regarded as a gesture, but I understand it more as a capability. Sharing is not A vision is more about how you build an executable system to implement your sharing and sharing."

So, what is Tencent's "open capability"?There are different understandings at the decision-making level. At a general office meeting, Ma Huateng asked 16 executives to write down what they thought was "Tencent's core competence" on paper. A total of 21 answers were collected. After many discussions, " "Ability" is focused on two points, which can be quickly deployed into action.

The first ability is capital.Lau Chiping is the proponent of this proposition. In the view of this former Goldman Sachsman, it is impossible for Tencent to get involved in all Internet products, especially the content field. Therefore, only through capital participation is the only feasible path.Forming an alliance through capital can not only achieve the goal of opening up, but also allow Tencent's huge traffic resources to be released in a capital sense.

In the past 10 years, Tencent has also implemented some mergers and acquisitions, but almost all of them are holding or wholly-owned acquisitions. They are strongly related to Tencent's existing business, and most of them occur in the field of online games-in this industry, Tencent's actions have never been soft, so it still reflects a closed or internal growth model.Future capital operations will be participatory, seeking only symbiosis, not ownership.

Liu Chiping's capital opening strategy has decisive strategic significance for Tencent in the next few years. He has opened up a new battlefield for Tencent at the capital level. On January 2011, 1, Tencent announced the establishment of the Tencent Industry Win-Win Fund, with an estimated investment scale of 24 billion yuan, to provide capital support for outstanding innovative companies in the Internet and related industries. Some veteran Tencent people became fund business managers, including Xu Liang and others who proposed the idea of ​​QQ show.The first important product invested by Mutual Win Fund is eLong.com, which is engaged in online travel business. On May 50, Tencent invested US$5 million to hold a 16% stake in eLong.com, becoming the second largest shareholder. At the beginning of June, Tencent announced that it will participate in investing in the RMB fund of the Innovation Works Development Fund to support the companies incubated by the Innovation Works or other early and mid-stage high-quality Internet technology companies. The total size of the fund is 8400 million yuan. part of it.

The second ability is traffic. Qzone, which has more than 5 million monthly active users, was selected as the best testing ground.

"Actually, we started discussing whether to build an open platform in 2008, but we have been entangled all the time. We really made up our minds after the 3Q war." Tang Daosheng, who is in charge of the Internet value-added business, recalled the internal debate in an interview, " In the field of SNS, how to implement an open strategy is an international topic. We have struggled in at least three aspects: first, whether opening should be application-oriented or content-oriented; To open up advertising resources, we are under pressure from the brand advertising department and the search department; third, whether the opening is for the platform or the upstream and downstream industry chain.”

In fact, almost all large platform-level Internet companies have encountered sharp criticism of insufficient openness, from Microsoft to Facebook, and even hardware companies such as Apple, when they started to launch application platforms, they were immediately regarded as "open". enemy".

In a sense, openness has always been a relative concept, just like the borders of countries. Openness to people requires authentication, openness to other countries requires reciprocity, and openness to trade requires laws and regulations. Never happened.In this regard, Jobs is the most staunch closureist.Isaacson wrote in "Steve Jobs Biography": "The most fundamental divide in the digital world is open and closed, and an instinctive love for integrated systems made Jobs firmly on the closed side."

In the past, Tencent, and later Tencent, have always been cautious and even conservative in their business opening initiatives.

On June 2011, 6, just six months after Ma Huateng announced the "half-year strategic transformation preparation period", Tencent held the first partner conference with thousands of people in Beijing. Mango.com, Xiami.com, China Unicom, Kingdee, 15.com Waiting for the partner company to stand on the platform together, Ma Huateng "please witness Tencent's strategic transformation".

Tencent announced that it will open the previously closed company's internal resources to external third-party partners free of charge, including open APIs, social networking, marketing tools, and QQ login.According to the published data, nearly 2 partners have been or are waiting in line to access the Tencent Open Platform. In 2010, Tencent’s overall revenue was 200 billion yuan. Excluding channel fees, the amount allocated to third-party partners was as high as 40 billion yuan. Among them, a single application—an online game product received the highest share in a single month Has exceeded 1000 million yuan.

Almost at the same time as Tencent held the Open Partner Conference, on June 6, Larry Page announced that Google had launched a social networking service, G+ (Google Plus), which opened many of Google's basic functions to users.Tang Daosheng said: "Google's approach gave us new incentives, and Tencent quickly made similar decisions internally."

On July 7, Tencent announced the opening of the QQ client, and at the same time launched the Q+ open platform of the Apple App Store application store model. QQ opens Q+ through the application button on the client, and then can install various extended applications, including the Q+ desktop client , Web version Q+, Q+ wallpaper, etc.

In the first half of 2011, Tencent's positive and open attitude and actions showed people a new growth model of Internet companies, which even has a certain symbolic significance in the global Internet industry.

Of course, Tencent's actions on opening up have always been cautious, more out of commercial considerations.Just in September 2011, a piece of news confirmed the above opinion. An online game company named Linekong launched a 9D online game "Mercenary World". Advertisement of Linekong.

Weibo: A New Rival in the Mobile Era

At the beginning of 2011, Ma Huateng was at the most anxious and dangerous moment in his career.

The 3Q battle made him exhausted, and he even began to doubt his "product belief".But in the future, this is actually the last battle of the PC era. In other words, it belongs to the bloody death of the old era.In the broader Internet world, an unpredictable new era is rapidly beginning, and more powerful opponents have appeared on another horizon.

On January 2010, 1, the genius Jobs released the world's first iPad in Silicon Valley. In June, he launched the iPhone 27 with a built-in 6-megapixel back-illuminated camera. The mobile era of the Internet suddenly came.In the following year, the sales of tablet PCs and smartphones exploded. The annual shipments in China reached 500 million units, and user relationships were quickly transferred.

Looking back at the battle situation at that time, in the Chinese market, there are two companies that are half a bit ahead of Tencent.

The first is of course telecom operators, especially China Mobile, which may be the earliest and most likely to become a mobile service provider with an open platform. At that time, many observers believed that "due to the will control the mobile instant messaging market".

China Mobile used to have a very prominent product - "Monternet", but in the era of non-smart phones, it was only a billing channel, without really controlling the communication between people and applications, and in the 2G environment, interaction can only reflect For SMS notifications, when smartphones burst out, SMS mode immediately lags behind.To make matters worse, in the past few years, China Mobile thought that the pattern had been established, and began to expel third parties in a planned way.Some media commented harshly: "A landlord encloses a particularly fertile land. At the beginning, he recruited a group of tenant farmers with their own cattle and farm tools to develop it. After the land was cultivated, the landlord was not willing to share the fruits with others, so he wanted to The method drove all the tenant farmers away, and bought a large number of cattle and farm tools for their own benefit. The change that happened later was that tractors suddenly appeared. Those tenant farmers who were driven away used new machines and tools to drive more more land, more fruit."

The second is Sina and its Sina Weibo.Since 2006, with the rise of companies such as Tencent, Ali, and Baidu, the news portal model has been marginalized, and the top three—Sina, Sohu, and Netease have successively fallen into a period of sluggish growth.Ding Lei of Netease has given up the frontal battlefield strategically and focused on the online game business.Sohu's Zhang Chaoyang has a multi-faceted layout, from input methods, online games to video, but he still can't find a decisive business.

Sina, which has always been the number one portal, is obviously the most embarrassing. It urgently needs a great product to prove its value.

In September 2009, Sina Weibo was quietly launched. Its imitation prototype was Twitter founded by Jack Dorsey in March 9. In the past 2006 years, the latter has been using a more portable 3 bytes, like a light cavalry The most dire threat to Facebook in general.

The leaders of Sina, Cao Guowei and Chen Tong, used their very skilled media management methods to exert their star effect, making Sina Weibo attract the attention of netizens at an astonishing speed.Around 2010, with the popularization of smartphones, Sina Weibo, which has natural mobile attributes, entered an unprecedented period of prosperity and became a phenomenon-level product of national character.

At the same time that Ma Huateng and Zhou Hongyi were in close combat, on November 2010, 11, Sina Weibo’s group function product, Sina Weiqun, began internal testing. The Weiqun product had dual functions of communication and media communication, and was recognized as It is regarded as the "QQ group" of the web version.

On November 11, Sina held the first Weibo Developer Conference.Cao Guowei announced that Sina Weibo has 16 million users and more than 1 million posts per day, 2500% of which come from mobile terminals. Sina is already the most influential and attention-getting Weibo operator in China.Kai-fu Lee, a former Google executive who became popular on Weibo overnight, published a book based on his blogging experience, titled "Weibo: Change Everything".In Li Kaifu's view: "Because of Weibo, the era of socialization of network communication has arrived! Because of Weibo, everyone has the possibility and should participate in it, so that they can become creators of new media!"

Social networks have the group characteristics of "winner takes all" and "environment takes all". The unexpected rise of Sina Weibo has challenged Tencent's user base unprecedentedly. Compared with Zhou Hongyi, Cao Guowei and Chen Tong are obviously It is a more dangerous and powerful opponent, and Ma Huateng joined the Weibo battle almost in a hurry.

Tencent Weibo was launched in May 2010, eight months later than Sina Weibo. For a strategic product, it is almost impossible to catch up.

In order to persuade various celebrities and opinion leaders to switch to Tencent Weibo, Tencent used all kinds of tricks up and down, from giving away Apple mobile phones to paying high "creation fees".At one point, Ma Huateng went into battle in person, bit the bullet and invited people he knew well to become users of Tencent Weibo, which was really embarrassing for his introverted personality.Although in February 2011, Tencent hastily announced that the number of users of Tencent Weibo reached 2 million, and even sports stars such as Liu Xiang had more than 1 million fans, but everyone understands that this is the achievement of QQ diversion and zombie fans .

Almost all observers are aware that in the fierce Weibo battle, Tencent’s chances of winning against Sina are very slim. “The one that can defeat Weibo must not be another Weibo.” If there is no new strategic product— —As Michael Porter suggested, “Challengers must find new ways of competing differently from leaders to succeed.” Tencent’s future in the mobile Internet era is undoubtedly bleak.

At this subtle but decisive turning point in the industry, existing advantages are involuntarily melting like ice in the sun, and every competitor is anxiously looking for new strategic heights and attack points. At this moment, the role of genius is like a diamond presented.

(End of this chapter)