Tencent Biography 1998-2016: Evolution of Chinese Internet Companies

Chapter 5 Monternet: The Unexpected Savior

The market is constantly changing, and the profit source area of ​​the industry in which the enterprise is located is also constantly changing. The enterprise must change its corporate design and profit model with the change of the profit area.

--Adrian Slyowski, "Discovering the Profit Zone"

Telecom operators accidentally saved China's Internet industry.

——Ma Huateng
The Monternet Project of the "Shadow King"
At the last moment of the "big snow disaster", Tencent received life-saving money, which allowed it to escape the disaster.But what really keeps Tencent alive is not IDG, Yingke or MIH, but a new business model.

In early 2000, a new attempt by Japanese telecom operator NTT DoCoMo caught Ma Huateng's attention.The company launched a value-added service under the brand name "i-mode" in 1999. It cooperates with some content providers to provide customers with various valuable content, such as comics, games, picture downloads and listening to music, etc. NTT DoCoMo will charge the content provider on behalf of them, and then the two will share the profits, thus forming a wireless value-added service other than the call service.

"Isn't this exactly what we talked about in the coffee shop? It's nothing more than changing a pager into a mobile phone." Ma Huateng said to Zhang Zhidong.He described a business model: Encourage OICQ users with mobile phones to register through SMS and open "Mobile OICQ", so that computers and mobile phones can be connected to achieve two-way communication; Tencent guides users to mobile phones, generating content, which is then shared with mobile operators.This is a model that no one has ever tried.

Zeng Liqing, who was listening with his ears upright, immediately decided to talk to the mobile phone operator.He found Shenzhen Unicom, which he had a friend relationship with, and the people at Unicom thought he could give it a try.At this time, the number of simultaneous online accounts of OICQ has reached 10, which is a good promotional platform.Every May 5th is the International Telecommunications Day. On this day, telecommunications operators will launch some preferential activities.Therefore, on May 17, 2000, Shenzhen Unicom launched a promotion program called "Mobile New Life" to the citizens of Shenzhen.Among them, "Mobile OICQ" was launched jointly with Tencent. OICQ users register a mobile OICQ number on their Unicom mobile phones, and then they can send messages through the SMS platform and realize real-time information exchange between mobile phones and computers. "At that time, an experimental system was set up, but China Unicom did not develop the charging function. However, we are still happy because at least we can run it." Ma Huateng recalled.

The cooperation between Tencent and Shenzhen Unicom has attracted the attention of other former colleagues of Zeng Liqing.

Just in April 2000, a new mobile phone operator specializing in mobile communications was officially spun off from China Telecom, and its name was China Mobile Communications Corporation.At this time, China Telecom was a highly profitable monopoly with an annual operating income of 4 billion yuan. The people who were stripped off to China Mobile were all young people who had just entered the job and were engaged in marginal businesses.No one expected that it would rapidly expand into a giant company in the near future.

After China Mobile was established, it began to study value-added business models.The Shenzhen branch of Guangdong Mobile has also noticed the model of NTT DoCoMo and the cooperation between Tencent and Shenzhen Unicom. On August 2000, 8, the newly established Shenzhen Mobile signed a trial operation agreement with Tencent for the "Instant Messenger - Mobile OICQ" service.According to the agreement, the service will be operated in Shenzhen for one and a half months, and then officially launched in Guangdong Mobile.

About 4 months later, China Mobile fully copied the "i-mode" model and officially launched a mobile Internet business brand - "Monternet". Value-added service providers get the bulk.Among the first three contracted partners, including Tencent, Lingtong and Meitong, all of them are small and medium-sized enterprises registered in Guangdong.

In terms of technology, there is no breakthrough in SMS value-added service, and it is even just an application experiment of operators on the existing technical level, and there is no precedent in western countries—especially the United States, which is regarded as a benchmark market , so it was not favored at first.However, no one thought that "Monternet" would unexpectedly bloom like wildflowers in the next few years. It would not only become one of the keys to the successful rise of China Mobile, but also unexpectedly revived the young, at a loss in the quagmire of losses. of Chinese Internet companies.

Chinese mobile phone users may have the highest enthusiasm for mobile phone text messages in the world, especially compared with American users, showing an extreme contrast.

The straightforward and straightforward personality of Americans makes most people prefer to talk directly on the phone. In their view, it is impolite to congratulate people by sending text messages.Statistics show that among American mobile phone users, only 5% use mobile phones to send and receive text messages.When users go through the mobile phone network registration procedures, they only care about call quality and call charges, and hardly care about the style of the mobile phone and value-added functions such as text messages and Internet access. Around 2000, many people used very old mobile phones that did not have text messaging at all.Due to insufficient demand, major US telecommunications companies are not enthusiastic about providing SMS services. For a long time, different mobile communication companies have not been able to exchange SMS messages, which is obviously different from the openness of Asian or European operators.In addition, most mobile phone payments in the United States are a fixed amount per month, ranging from more than 20 US dollars to more than 100 US dollars, and they are all free from 7:9 or 10:[-] pm, while most mobile phone text messages need to be paid separately, and the cost of sending a message is as high as [-]. Cents, its exorbitant cost has also become a factor hindering the development of mobile phone text messages.

In China, the situation is exactly the opposite.Cell phone calls here are very expensive, and a dime a text message is obviously more cost-effective.The reserved personality of the Chinese also makes people more willing to greet each other and express their emotions through text messages.This subtle difference in consumption characteristics has resulted in different business models.With the rapid proliferation of mobile phones, the contrast has become more and more dramatic.In 2002, the total number of short messages sent by mobile phone users in the United States was 81 billion, but the Chinese sent 2004 billion during the 7-day Spring Festival holiday in 70 alone.By 2006, the volume of text messages in the United States in a whole year was less than that of a day during the Chinese New Year.It is the Chinese people's enthusiasm for SMS that gives China Mobile and content providers great room for innovation.

Of course, few people could see this situation clearly in the second half of 2000. In this year, China Mobile's short message revenue was only 1 million yuan, that is, 10 billion text messages were sent.However, for Tencent, they seem to see a glimmer of hope. "We seem to see money." Zeng Liqing said.

Monternet saves China's Internet

The "Monternet" plan, which was officially launched on November 2001, 11, was first piloted in Guangdong Mobile, and then followed up in Sichuan, Zhejiang and other provinces.China Mobile has adopted a very open attitude, and it promises to distribute 10% of the SMS value-added revenue to its partners.In order to encourage everyone to participate, it also designed a "horse racing mechanism", the more active partners can get more resource allocation and policy support.

In the next few months, Zeng Liqing led his marketing staff to frantically travel to various mobile companies, negotiating and signing contracts to open "Mobile QQ" one by one.Zeng Liqing hung a map of the whole country in his small office, marked with red and blue, red for China Unicom, blue for China Mobile, whichever province was won was marked with color. "Our people often carried the server by themselves and went to the computer room of the mobile company to install it, as if it was a race against time." He recalled.

In February 2001, the iconic Beijing Mobile became the ninth branch to open this service, which means that Tencent has completed the layout of major markets across the country.By March, the total number of short messages sent by "Mobile QQ" has reached 2 million, which can bring Tencent a monthly income of more than 3 million yuan.

In June 2001, that is, the month when MIH officially became a shareholder of Tencent, Ma Huateng called together more than 6 people from the whole company and announced to everyone: Due to the smooth development of the "Monternet" business, Tencent achieved a single month in financial statements for the first time. breakeven.By the end of the year, Tencent achieved a turnover of nearly 10 million yuan and a net profit of more than 5000 million yuan, all of which benefited from China Mobile's "Monternet" project.

"For most netizens, the stars of the IT world are neither NetEase, Sohu, Sina, nor Ding Lei, Zhang Chaoyang, and Wang Zhidong, but the little penguin invented by Shenzhen Tencent—QQ (formerly known as OICQ)." June 2001 On April 6, Dayang.com, a local news portal in Guangdong, wrote in a report.Such an argument was not accepted by the mainstream media outside of Guangdong at the time.However, Tencent is indeed the earliest profitable Internet company.At this time, the three major portals listed on Nasdaq, Sina, Netease and Sohu, were all in a deep loss whirlpool. Netease’s net loss rose from the previously announced $25 million to $1730 million. Due to doubts, it was once announced that NetEase stock would stop trading.Although Ma Yun's Alibaba claimed to have 2040 million online business users, it almost burned the US$400 million it raised.He had to close overseas companies one after another, dismiss foreign employees, and move the company headquarters from Shanghai back to his hometown of Hangzhou.

Among the three major news portals, NetEase was the first to invest in the Monternet project. In January 2001, Ding Lei, who was discouraged by the terrible stock price drop, signed a cooperation agreement with Guangdong Mobile, announcing the launch of mobile phone short message business.He later said: "When Guangdong Mobile approached me to talk about the cooperation of 'Monternet', everyone had no idea. Just like a drowning person, it is good to be able to grab a straw randomly. Unexpectedly, this straw The straw has actually grown into a big branch.” It was driven by the SMS business that NetEase came out of a loss in the second quarter of 1, a year later, with a quarterly profit of 2002 yuan. and pictures, etc., more than 3.8 million yuan, accounting for 1500% of the overall income. The Asian Wall Street Journal commented that NetEase was the first profitable portal after the Internet bubble burst.Inspired by Netease, Sina and Sohu successively announced cooperation with China Mobile to fully develop mobile phone short message business.

Fueled by the "Monternet" plan, the number of short messages sent by Chinese mobile phone users suddenly exploded. In 2001, the number of short messages sent by China Mobile surged 16 times to 159 billion, and in 2002 it increased to 793 billion. China's short message volume accounted for one-third of the global short message volume.In China Mobile's revenue, the proportion of data service revenue rose from 1% before 3 to 2001% in 2.1.

In August 2002, China Mobile held a "'Monternet' common development strategy seminar" in Guangzhou, and more than 8 content suppliers attended the meeting.At the meeting, the well-known Ding Lei was regarded as a model of cooperation, but it was Ma Huateng, who was still unknown at the time, who really got the most benefits.Compared with news portal websites, QQ, as an instant messaging tool, is obviously more bound to users and is used more frequently.Statistics show that the number of short messages sent through mobile QQ accounted for about 100% of the total number of "Monternet" short messages.

The first organizational restructuring

With the development of the "Monternet" business, the founders carried out the first transformation of Tencent's organizational structure, and the entire company was divided into three major departments, namely the marketing department (M line, Marketing), the R&D department (R line , Research) and functional departments.Among the various appointments, Ma Huateng is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Zeng Liqing is the Chief Operating Officer (COO), Zhang Zhidong is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO), and Chen Yidan is the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), responsible for all administrative affairs including logistics , Xu Chenye is the chief information officer (CIO), in charge of news media affairs and also manages the portal website.

A large number of outstanding professionals were also introduced into Tencent at this time, such as Wang Qi, manager of the finance department, Guo Kaitian, manager of the administration department, and Luo Shuohan, the current chief financial officer (CFO) and senior vice president of the group.

There are three departments under the R line: the wireless development department is responsible for the SMS business of the mobile terminal, and the manager is Deng Yan; the basic development department is responsible for the underlying technology and server maintenance, and the manager is Li Haixiang; the product development department is responsible for the technical development and maintenance of the QQ client, and the manager is Wu Xiaoguang.

The M line has a comprehensive marketing department and a mobile communication department.The former is responsible for the construction and management of the national sales team, and the latter is responsible for business connection with the three major telecom operators. The managers are Zou Xiaomin and Tang Xin respectively.

In terms of company decision-making, Tencent has formed a general office meeting system.Held every two weeks, the participants are 5 founders and heads of core business departments, with 10 to 12 participants.This number of people has not been broken. Until 2013, the total number of employees of Tencent had exceeded 2, and the number of participants in the general meeting was only 16.

The general meeting is the most core decision-making meeting of Tencent. Ma Huateng requires all participants to come to attend no matter how busy their daily work is.Each meeting starts on time at 10:2 a.m. and usually lasts until 3-[-]:[-] a.m., so it is a marathon meeting that tests physical strength.

"Pony likes to hold long meetings. After every topic is raised, he will not express his position first, but wants to hear everyone's attitude and opinions, so the meetings are often very long." Several participants revealed to me The scene of the meeting. "In the general office meeting, almost all important decisions are made after 12 midnight, because by that time, everyone is too tired, and people often shout 'too sleepy, too sleepy, hurry up' Set it down', and set things down."

A rather special practice is that Tencent’s general office does not have a voting system. According to the memory of Xi Dan, head of the human resources department and others, “in the past ten years, no decision has been made by voting.”In terms of departmental business matters, the opinions of relevant responsible managers are highly valued, "whoever is in charge, who proposes, who is responsible".On matters related to the company's overall strategy, consensus is the prerequisite for decision-making. If there are many people who oppose it, it will be shelved. Once the majority of people agree, the opponents can reserve their opinions.In this process, Ma Huateng was not granted the power of "one vote in favor" or "one vote veto". He seemed more like a compromiser.

Unsuccessful Charge Trial
Seeing the fiery situation of the wireless business department earning millions of dollars a month, the product development department responsible for the QQ client is like a beggar holding a golden job. Almost all the money raised by Ma Huateng is spent on QQ, but there is no direct profit. way.

The first model that comes to mind is, of course, advertising.

As early as August 2000, banner advertisements appeared on the QQ page for the first time. Customers spend between RMB 8 and RMB 2 per day. Calculated by the number of times they are opened, the daily exposure of advertisements can reach 9 million times, 4 million times on weekends, which is very cost-effective in terms of "cost per thousand people". "At that time, almost all the advertising customers were Internet companies that were burning money. Everyone advertised to each other. I advertised with you, and you also invested with me. Everyone had income. In fact, they were defrauding investors. We also I have talked to many consumer goods companies, and only Procter & Gamble and Nokia have tried to launch some."

Compared with portal sites such as Sina, Tencent's advertising prices are very low, often only 1/5 of the former, but the exposure rate is very high.However, because of the small area of ​​QQ, the display effect of advertisements is not good. Moreover, the age of QQ users is relatively young, and the purchasing power of products is doubtful. Therefore, the promotion of advertisements is not smooth.By December 2000, Tencent's nominal advertising revenue once reached 12 million yuan, but by February of the following year, under the attack of the Internet cold wave, fewer and fewer companies were willing to advertise on QQ.

The second model Wu Xiaoguang thought of was the membership system.

"We calculated at that time that there were nearly 1 million QQ users. If one percent of the users were willing to buy our services, it would be a very considerable income." In November 2000, Tencent launched the "QQ Club". "Membership service" provides paying members with services that free users cannot enjoy, including functions such as saving network favorites and friend lists, and you can also choose a "beautiful account" that is better remembered. The membership fee is 11 yuan per month.

This business has high hopes. Tencent claims that this is "the first value-added service business in the history of China's Internet." Tencent Membership Card” and hired people to deliver in large quantities in downtown areas and university campuses.

However, under the strong promotion, the "QQ Club" has been neglected unprecedentedly. Only a few hundred users are willing to join every month, the monthly income is only 3 to 3000 yuan, and only 10 members have been developed within half a year.This result made Tencent very frustrated. Ma Huateng attributed the failure to the lack of payment methods. "At that time, almost no young Chinese consumers had credit cards. They had to go to the post office to remit money. Few netizens were willing to go to the post office for [-] yuan a month." Since there were very few payers, the services promised by Tencent were not available. Development and realization, this is a very embarrassing business attempt in Tencent's history.

The third business to be tried is enterprise services.

For quite a long time, Ma Huateng firmly believes that charging for enterprises will be one of the most important profit channels for QQ.At the end of 2000, Tencent launched the BQQ (Business QQ) version for enterprises. This version retains QQ's text, audio and video communication, file transfer and other functions, and has set permissions to control chatting at work.At the same time, functions such as video network conferencing, discussion groups, and group sending of short messages have been added.Some well-known companies in Shenzhen, such as Vanke, have become the first batch of BQQ trial users. They seem to welcome this service, but they still refuse to pay for it. Tencent can only get some profits from the group's SMS.There are also some business owners who think that QQ is too "naive". They use QQ to chat with friends in their daily life, but they insist on using MSN, which looks more commercialized, at work.

Three years later, in November 3, after six version upgrades, Tencent announced that the free BQQ "trial version" had reached 2003 users. On this basis, Tencent cooperated with IBM, UFIDA, Kingdee, etc. Cooperated with software suppliers to propose an upgraded Tencent Communication (RTX, Real Time eXchange), but the promotion performance of this product is still disappointing.In the next 11 years, Tencent has been doing nothing in the commercial market.

QQ charge storm: the first crisis of public opinion

The fourth charging service launched by the product development department is the QQ number registration fee, which caused Tencent to encounter the first public opinion crisis since its establishment.

In February 2001, the number of new QQ registrations reached a record 2 million per day, and Tencent’s servers were under tremendous pressure. Zhang Zhidong said: “At that time, hundreds of thousands of accounts were issued every day, and many people rushed to register, resulting in repeated operations. 100 million numbers only need 100 million operations, because of repeated operations, there are tens of millions of applications, and the success rate is reduced to about 100%." In this situation of short supply, Tencent began to restrict user registration, And reduce number allocation every month, from 2 million to 100, and then to about 60. At the same time, users are encouraged to obtain QQ numbers by dialing 40 Shengxun or sending SMS. The fee for dialing 168 Shengxun is 168 yuan per minute , the registration fee is 0.8 yuan each time by sending a short message on the mobile phone, and the user needs to pay about 0.5 yuan to obtain a QQ number.Tencent did not explicitly announce the registration fee, but it is almost impossible for users to register for a free QQ account.

This policy quickly caused dissatisfaction among users. In July, a netizen posted "Tencent QQ, you did a great job!" ", the article warned: "If there is a second online instant messaging software that can compete with QQ, Tencent launching this registration method that users do not welcome represents suicide." The author then called on everyone to boycott Tencent's charging behavior. : "This may make Tencent go further on the road of charging. Maybe in the future, you will have to pay a certain fee to log in to QQ once, and you will even be charged for sending a message. If no one can snipe Tencent, this will not It is not impossible that a monopoly can breed an enterprise's endless desire to deprive users of profits." This article was quickly spread on various news websites and forums.

By August 8, the anger against Tencent had been vented on the traditional print media. Beijing’s largest circulation consumer weekly “Boutique Shopping Guide” published almost a full page of “You must learn how to register for an email account, Tencent In the article "Staging Dong Shi Xiao Yan", the reporter wrote from personal experience: "It took 20 minutes to register from the page in the four time periods of morning, noon, evening and night, but all failed. Therefore, there is reason to suspect that Tencent has already registered on the server. The page registration has been completely restricted. If you want to apply for a new QQ number, you can only spend money to register with your mobile phone or call 20.” The article expressed strong dissatisfaction with Tencent: “Netizens are very sad and annoyed by Tencent’s approach. , Some netizens said that we have tolerated Tencent's pop-up advertisements and window flashing advertisements, and now we use this method to increase revenue without any prior notice. It is really dishonorable... Tencent is inappropriate Sometimes, it charged fees for inappropriate projects in an inappropriate way and was criticized by netizens. Maybe it’s time for Tencent to reflect on it.”

The report of "Boutique Shopping Guide" put Tencent at the cusp of public opinion.

"There have never been so many reporters calling, and we didn't know how to deal with it. The phone rang, and no one wanted to answer it." Xu Chenye, who was in charge of public relations, recalled.Ma Huateng refused to be interviewed by any media. For a long time, he was introverted and didn't know how to communicate with journalists.Chen Yidan, who is a legal professional, was ordered to draft an "open letter", which was published in full by the "Boutique Shopping Guide" two days later.

Tencent defended itself in the open letter, saying: “After referring to the number of new registered users of other foreign Internet instant messaging service providers, we have every reason to believe that the excessive growth of registered users is a great waste of free resources. Seeing this, Tencent began to limit the number of registered users, and controlled the number of daily allocations at 20 to 30...Tencent launched services such as mobile phone registration and dialing voice channel registration services to provide users who really need Provide a viable channel."

Tencent's lawyer-like open letter has almost no effect on calming users' anger, and even in the eyes of many people, it is "arrogant and unreasonable sophistry."Some netizens retorted: "Why don't ICQ or MSN abroad charge for the increase of registered users? And the increase of users has nothing to do with the waste of free resources."

Within Tencent, there are also opposing opinions on whether to continue to implement the charging policy.Some people worry that Tencent will be "overwhelmed" by users' saliva, and some people worry that new competitors will emerge.Ma Huateng insisted on the fee-charging strategy: "We had just received investment from MIH at that time. Although the business of 'Monternet' was improving, the prospect was uncertain. Tencent will not be scolded to death, but it will definitely be because it cannot find profits. mode and bled to death.” In his view, keeping Tencent alive is definitely the most important thing.

Despite the overwhelming criticism, Tencent announced in March 2002 that it would launch the "QQ Travel Premium Number Zone" service, selling the right to use QQ numbers. If you choose this service, you can get 3-digit, 5-digit, 6-digit premium numbers and birthday numbers The right to use and enjoy the QQ membership function.By September, the "QQ Xing" number was officially sold to users across the country, with a monthly fee of 8 yuan, and the free number and one-time number application basically stopped issuing.

Tencent's charging strategy really brought in the "wolf of competition".

Just in September when the "QQ Xing" number was officially released, a start-up company called Langma launched the Langma UC client. It has won the favor of users with many novel functions such as unique scene chat, action language, and animated emoticons. , In just three months, the number of registered users exceeded 9 million, and the number of online users exceeded 3.In the few months since Langma UC came out, almost all the portals have launched their own instant messaging tools at the same time - Netease Bubble, Sina Chat, Sohu I find you, Yahoo Messenger, 800's E-call, TOM's skype, more than 3 similar products appeared on the market, and Tencent detonated a siege campaign against itself.

By June 2003, Ma Huateng woke up like a dream and decided to return to the road of free.In the name of "Celebrating the Third Birthday of Mobile QQ", Tencent announced that new mobile QQ users can get a free long-term QQ number.So far, Tencent has once again opened the door to issue long-term use numbers.Two months later, QQ reopened for free registration.However, the siege of Tencent by the pack of wolves has already taken place, and Tencent had to struggle to deal with it in the next two years or so.

In the history of Tencent, the "pretty account fee" in 2002 was rarely mentioned in the future. In fact, it was a very dangerous misguided experience.

Q coin: the birth of virtual currency

Throughout 2002, although Tencent’s experiment on the QQ charging model has been very unsuccessful, there is still an innovation that has been preserved like a seed. It will become a foundation for Tencent’s industry in the future, and that is the birth of Q coins.

Due to the lack of a financial credit system—this is one of the biggest differences between the Internet industry in China and the United States—how to establish their own payment system has plagued all operators for a long time.The practitioners of online games were the first to come up with a solution, and this is exactly what happened around 2002.

During the cold winter of the Internet bubble, everyone was looking for a profitable market, and online games were quickly identified as a "rigid demand."As early as March 1998, Bao Yueqiao, the developer of UCDOS (a widely used Chinese character operating system), together with Jian Jing and Wang Jianhua, founded China's earliest chess and card leisure online game platform "Lianzhong Games" in Beijing. For a long time, it had more than 3 million registered users and 2000 million monthly active users. In 300, Lianzhong was acquired by Zhonggong.com for 1999 million yuan to acquire 1000% of the shares. In 79, Guo Yu and others founded another chess and card casual game platform "Bianfeng" in Hangzhou, which formed a pattern of "Northern United, Southern Bianfeng".However, Lianzhong and Wingfeng have not found a way to make game players pay for a long time.

At the beginning of 2001, a game company "Ninetowns", which was much smaller than Lianzhong and Wingfeng, "accidentally" found a way out.Zhu Jun, the founder of Ninetowns, who was born as a foreign trade salesman, built a payment platform and reached a 163, 139 call sharing agreement with the telecommunications company. Users who dial up the Internet through telecommunications, as long as they go to Ninetowns, the ISP’s Internet access fee will be 100%. Ninetowns also issued a co-branded card with Shanghai Telecom, and the 15 yuan Internet card contains 2001 yuan of "Ninetowns game currency".Zhu Jun invented "Ninetowns Points". Players can use the currency in the co-branded card to purchase "points" to play a game that requires payment, or bet in the game to win "game points" equivalent to real money. currency".As a result, Ninetowns has formed two charging models: share Internet access fees with telecom companies, and issue exclusive virtual currency.Around July 7, The200's monthly income reached 300 million yuan, and among the 10 million registered users, there were as many as [-] paid users.

Tencent began discussing the issuance of virtual currency in early 2002.When promoting the membership service of "QQ Club" and the business of "Beautiful Account Zone of QQ Line", Ma Huateng and Zeng Liqing deeply felt the burden of the payment system. "With their own virtual currency, maybe the situation will be better." realized.

According to memory, Xu Chenye was the first to propose the concept of "Q coin". "During a discussion in March, Xu Chenye accidentally said the word 'Q coins', and everyone thought it was good, so it was decided." The rules of Q coins are also very simple: one yuan can buy one Q coin , Paying users "recharge" by associating the card number and password of the equivalent denomination card with the QQ number.

At the beginning, Q coins did not enter QQ software system services, it was just used as a marketing tool.The marketing department in charge of Zeng Liqing officially launched Q coins to users in May, but in the latest version of QQ software released in April - QQ 5C, there is no description of Q coins.Compared with the previous version, the biggest change of this new version is the integration of a series of value-added services such as Wireless QQ and BQQ into the QQ client software.Tencent believes that "Tencent QQ 4C, which integrates various functions, has completely surpassed the scope of a 'network instant messaging tool', and it may be more appropriate to call it a 'communication tool in the era of mobile Internet'".Obviously, this is a "self-expectation" that is at least 2000 years ahead.

In the first year, the monthly circulation of Q coins was about 50 yuan, almost all of which were obtained from selling QQ accounts.As QQ registration returned to the free road, Q coins once became a tasteless "chicken rib".But in the second half of 2002, due to the emergence of a revolutionary fee-based product, Q coins suddenly became a sharp weapon.

(End of this chapter)