Tencent Biography 1998-2016: Evolution of Chinese Internet Companies
Chapter 9 Fighting MSN: Honor and Destiny
Chapter 9 Fighting MSN: Honor and Destiny
For strategic considerations, the first target I choose to conquer is often not a vulnerable small company, but the strongest opponent.
—John D. Rockefeller (founder of the Standard Oil Company), "Letters to His Son"
Innovation is always the result of encounter.
— Gerstner (former chairman of IBM)
MSN is here
In August 2004, Xiong Minghua, who had worked at the Microsoft headquarters for nine years, was ordered to return to China to set up the MSN China R&D Center, which he decided to build in Shanghai.Almost at the same time, Microsoft established the MSN China Market Center in Beijing, headed by Luo Chuan, an employee in China who has 8 years of service experience.This means that the most heavyweight enemy in Tencent's history has appeared.
In the past two years, news about MSN's imminent entry into China has been rampant.Unlike NetEase and Sina, which are making great fanfare, Microsoft has never had a dedicated MSN China operation team, but its number of users is three times that of NetEase.According to the data from the survey agency Analysys International, in 3, without any publicity and localization support, MSN's market share in China's instant messaging was 2005%, although it was far from QQ's 10.58%. It was already the second largest instant messaging software in China at that time.
More importantly, among the approximately 2000 million business users, Tencent users account for approximately 950 million, accounting for 47%, and MSN users account for approximately 1075 million, accounting for 53%. 95% come from lost users of Tencent QQ.When these data were reported to the Microsoft headquarters, the Americans were taken aback. Under the leadership of Luo Chuan and other employees in China, Microsoft made the decision to separate the MSN business and implement localized operations.
Xiong Minghua, born in 1965, is the most senior Chinese product manager in Microsoft's MSN business unit.In his early years, he worked in a software company founded by a Taiwanese, and was engaged in the development of Windows Sinicization technology. He is an expert in device drivers with practical experience. In folk terms, he is an expert in developing virus software.After going to the United States, he first worked in IBM and joined Microsoft in 1996. At that time, Bill Gates was launching an attack on Netscape. Xiong Minghua worked as a product manager in the IE browser department and participated in the development of IE3.5 to IE5.0. Version development, "witnessed the whole process of how Microsoft 'strangled' Netscape". In 1999, Xiong Minghua entered the Windows department again and participated in the development of Windows 2000 and MSN. "After 2001, when my options expired, I wanted to retire or return to China to start a business." After that, he often returned to China, exchanged interviews with Lenovo, Founder and other companies, served as a visiting professor at Zhejiang University, and published "Software Development" Science and Art" and "Software Development Process and Cases" two professional books.During a lecture, there were Ren Yuxin and Wu Xiaoguang among the students in the audience.
Two weeks after Xiong Minghua returned to Shanghai, Zhang Zhidong found him through a friend.
At dusk, they met at Canglongfang Restaurant at the junction of Dongping Road and Hengshan Road. Zhang Zhidong brought two bottles of red wine with him.They chatted for four or five hours, and Xiong Minghua was deeply impressed by Zhang Zhidong's proficiency in technology. Before saying goodbye, Zhang Zhidong directly asked Xiong Minghua: "Are you willing to join Tencent?"
This is just a small detail before the war between the two armies.Xiong Minghua laughed at Zhang Zhidong's invitation. "At that time, MSN had no imaginary enemy in its eyes. We didn't take QQ seriously. Its UI (interface design) was too bad, and its software development level was not high." Xiong Minghua quickly formed a team of more than 30 people. R&D team.
Zheng Zhihao, who returned from Seattle with Xiong Minghua and later switched to Tencent, recalled a detail: "We went to the university to recruit college students, and we were surrounded by people at every recruitment site. The crowd was full of people, and the resumes piled up. They saw Microsoft It was as if they had seen a god, and they terrified us completely.” More than a year later, Zheng Zhihao, who jumped to Tencent, went to the campus to recruit students, “Almost none of the top 10 students are willing to come to Tencent. Excellent talents. At this time, I suddenly realized that Tencent was fighting Microsoft with 'second-rate' or even 'third-rate' talents."
"Acquisition" Zhang Xiaolong
In the early years of the 21st century, the fear of Microsoft was almost an instinct of companies in the IT industry. In 1984, among the top ten personal computer software companies in the United States, Microsoft ranked second. By 2001, Microsoft ranked first, and the other nine companies that year had disappeared from the rankings.Microsoft dominates 9% of the world's computer interfaces, Windows operating system, Offices office software, IE browser, and the acquired Hotmail mailbox, Skype Internet phone, constitute a daunting giant platform, Bill Gates defeated it through the bundling strategy Netscape's story is not far behind.
In the Chinese market, Gates adopted a strategy of allowing piracy. In 1998, he told "Fortune" magazine: "As long as the Chinese do piracy, we hope they can pirate Microsoft. They will become addicted to piracy, and in the next 10 years, we will find ways to get back the piracy." Facts That's why Microsoft didn't start to crack down on piracy in the Chinese market until 2008.
After Microsoft announced its MSN localization strategy, many people from the capital market to the Internet industry believed that the end of Tencent might be coming.Xu Chenye, who is in charge of public affairs, recalled that once he went to an Internet forum, at least two people came over and asked him for confirmation in a low voice: "I heard that you Tencent intends to let MSN acquire it?" In the letter to Ma Huateng, he wrote: "QQ group is not a social network. Thanks to QQ for popularizing the concept of instant messaging to Chinese children. When they grow up, work, and have money, they will slowly transfer to MSN. , seamless switching.” Inside Tencent, although the atmosphere of tension is getting heavier, in the view of Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong, it is not an easy task for MSN to shake the basic market of QQ.As Toynbee reveals, "High-level civilizations have always been born in extremely difficult rather than exceptionally superior environments. The greater the challenge, the stronger the stimulus."
On September 2004, 9, Tencent launched the official version of QQ in 9, which was the first major revision of QQ after Tencent went public.This version is also another classic version after the August 2004 version. It has three major technical features: first, it strengthens the network transmission function, greatly improves the speed of file transfer, and supports resuming uploads from breakpoints; second , launched QQ network hard drive and interactive space; third, improved the organizational structure of QQ groups, and designed "groups within groups" on the basis of group chats.These improvements can be described as "rigid requirements" for users of instant messaging, and thus are enthusiastically sought after.What makes Ma Huateng especially happy is that the acceleration of network disk and transmission speed is a tool improvement, which is very attractive to business people.
At an executive meeting, Wu Xiaoguang told a true story that he heard: Microsoft sent a market researcher to conduct a user survey in an office building in Beijing, and a user filled in 5000 yuan in the "monthly income" item of the questionnaire. , The researcher took the questionnaire back: "I'm sorry, you are not our target user." All the senior executives of Tencent leaned forward and backward with laughter.
What worries Ma Huateng the most is that QQ has always had a poor reputation in the business market—even though the new version has made many improvements.In the central city office buildings at that time, a computer with QQ hanging on it would be the object of ridicule.Many companies expressly stipulate that QQ is not allowed to be used during working hours. In their view, QQ is only a tool for chatting and striking up conversations, and MSN is a necessity for office informatization.
"We don't have the ability to solve this embarrassing problem in a short time, but if we can find a blocking product, maybe the situation will be better." Moving forward along this line of thought, everyone discussed a platform-level product—— E-mail. "For business people, instant messaging tools are closely related to mailboxes. Tencent's QQ mailbox is not good enough. Among the more than 1 million QQ users, less than 1% use QQ mailboxes. Microsoft's Hotmail is too strong. We have to fill this board."
The best way to replenish the board is to acquire Hotmail's strongest competitor in China, so Foxmail has entered Tencent's field of vision.
The developer of Foxmail is Zhang Xiaolong, a legendary software engineer in South China.Zhang Xiaolong studied at the Telecommunications Department of Huazhong University of Science and Technology. After graduating from graduate school in 1994, he went to work at Jingyue Computer.Around 1996, he independently wrote Foxmail. "Foxmail does not imitate anyone, it is an email client earlier than Outlook. I remember that when I wrote Foxmail, Ding Lei was writing Webmail. The difference is that Ding Lei's mailbox is based on web development, while mine is based on Client. At that time, China’s Internet connection was very slow, but the client was faster.” After Foxmail came out, the number of users of the Chinese version exceeded 400 million within a year, and the users of the English version spread over more than 20 countries, ranking among the “Top Ten Domestic software".
Therefore, Zhang Xiaolong is regarded by the industry as a representative of the second generation of software engineers after Qiu Bojun.Zhang Xiaolong is introverted and doesn't like to mingle. He is an amateur tennis player.He has little interest in business. When Foxmail was in full swing, he never thought of forming a company for commercial operation.After that, he joined Lingtong Company under the Guangdong Academy of Sciences. In 1998, Zhang Xiaolong sold Foxmail to Shenzhen Boda for 1200 million yuan.Then came the bursting of the Internet bubble. Boda has never found a way to make Foxmail profitable. Zhang Xiaolong had to take more than 10 engineers to work as an enterprise email server. This is a small market and it can be said that it is lingering.
In February 2005, Liu Chiping went to acquire Foxmail on behalf of Tencent, and Zeng Liqing executed it together with him.The negotiation between Tencent and Zhang Xiaolong was a smooth fit from the very beginning because of their similar temperament and the same understanding of the Internet.Negotiations progressed quickly. On March 2, Tencent announced that it had formally signed an agreement to acquire Foxmail software and related intellectual property rights. This was the first acquisition case in Tencent's history. The exact purchase price has not been announced so far. .Zhang Xiaolong was unwilling to work in Shenzhen, so Ma Huateng made concessions and established a Guangzhou R&D center with Zhang Xiaolong as the general manager.
Also in February 2005, with the efforts of Wang Dawei, who is in charge of international affairs, Tencent and Google announced a business cooperation.Tencent has already started offering Google's web search service to its domestic users.At the same time, Tencent will also provide AdSense, Google's online advertising service for search results.Google's web search box is embedded in Tencent's major Internet services, including QQ instant messaging client, website, TT browser, Tencent TM and Tencent RTX.
The acquisition of Foxmail and the cooperation with Google are seen as two external defenses for Tencent to deal with the localization of MSN.
Luo Chuan's Triple Attack
Although a lot of preparations have been made, Microsoft China's various bold actions on MSN still make it very difficult for Tencent to parry.
Just over 20 days after Tencent acquired Foxmail, on April 4, Microsoft and Lianhe Investment Co., Ltd. announced in Shanghai the establishment of a joint venture—Shanghai MicroPort Software Co., Ltd. Tang Jun, the newly appointed president of Microsoft (China) Co., Ltd. The signing ceremony was attended by the CEO, the mayor of Shanghai and McGarry Mundi, the chief technology officer of Microsoft.One month later, on the basis of Minimally Invasive, Shanghai Maxen Network Communication Technology Co., Ltd. was established. Microsoft and Lianhe injected capital of 11 million US dollars and 500 million US dollars respectively, and Luo Chuan became the president.Lianhe Investment is an investment-oriented enterprise affiliated to the Shanghai State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission. This joint venture background arouses countless associations.
From the very first day of its establishment, Luo Chuan's idea was to achieve profitability as soon as possible. Therefore, in terms of business development, MSN adopted the most open subcontracting cooperation model.
U.S. Internet companies usually adopt two models to enter the regional market: one is the Yahoo model, which is completely handed over to the local partner for operation, the headquarters provides brand and technical support, and finally only shares the profits.The other model is the Google model, which establishes a huge team of engineers and marketing, and adopts a fully localized operation form.Microsoft is unwilling to lose its dominance over MSN—in the cooperation with Lianhe Investment, although Microsoft’s shareholding ratio is smaller than the other party’s, it strongly stipulates in the agreement that Microsoft will control all the management rights of the company.At the same time, however, Microsoft did not have enough determination to fight a strategic battle. The registered capital of Shanghai Messen was only 800 million US dollars, which means that Microsoft only invested less than 500 million US dollars.Therefore, Luo Chuan decided to adopt a new method, which he called the business model of channel content cooperation.
MSN China launched the MSN Chinese website, which formed a portal-type platform. Luo Chuan invited bids from the public for each channel in a contracted manner.Due to the great reputation of MSN, it quickly attracted many professional partners. Taobao, Shanghai Media, CCID, Renlaiche.com, English Village, Maopu.com, and Lianzhong.com were included in the first batch of lists. , Zhiyun Times, and Beiqingwang 9 large-scale websites, Luo Chuan formed a "joint column" overnight in a vertical and horizontal manner, and some people called it the "Anti-QQ Alliance".The media commented: "MSN China's cooperation model, on the one hand, avoids the risks of foreign joint ventures in terms of content and policies, and at the same time can quickly import MSN Messenger traffic to the website and convert it into income."
The second profit method Luo Chuan resorted to was to quickly cut into the telecom value-added business.He has been immersed in the Chinese market for 10 years, and he is well aware of the huge profits of mobile phone text messages. MSN China invested in the acquisition of Tsinghua Shenxun, a value-added telecommunications service company in Shenzhen, and provided MSN users with a 10-yuan monthly SMS service.Before this, no international Internet company dared to enter this gray area full of controversy and moral hazard.
On October 2005, 10, Luo Chuan got the third good card for attacking: On this day, Yahoo and Microsoft announced that they had reached a "milestone agreement" to enable instant messaging users around the world to achieve interconnection.The industry's first interoperability agreement between the two global instant messaging service providers enables users of MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger to interact, which is expected to form the world's largest instant messaging community, together occupying more than 13% of the global market share, As a result, nearly half of the IM users in the world will be connected for the first time, and the number will exceed 44 million.
Luo Chuan reacted immediately. He stated to the media that as long as the security is guaranteed, MSN is willing to communicate with more IMs including Tencent QQ.
The intercommunication agreement between Yahoo and Microsoft has plunged Tencent into a very passive public opinion vortex this autumn.Almost all the media and experts are cheering for the intercommunication. Many people think: "With the rapid development of MSN and Yahoo Messenger in the Chinese market, especially in the business class, the strength of the two is no less than Tencent. , will further increase its strength, and may even quickly reduce QQ to a weak IM in the business class." The public relations department of MSN China told reporters, please tell Mr. Ma Huateng that President Luo Chuan is willing to communicate with him at any time and any place. Negotiate matters related to interconnection.
Redefine instant messaging
Ma Huateng resolutely rejected the "communication invitation" issued by Luo Chuan.He can always show the uncompromising strength inherent in the blood of Chaoshan people at critical moments, even though this is not like his appearance at all, or not so flattering.
His reason is: we can't risk user value, it's irresponsible.In his view, the three factors of user demand, security, and cost are the key to China Unicom. In fact, the security issue will be resolved sooner or later, but there are still "costs and benefits that need to be discussed clearly. If there is no exchange of tangible value, then There should be complementary intangible values, so that a win-win situation is possible, and only a win-win situation will lead to interconnection.”He refused to negotiate with MSN, nor did he intend to allow QQ to interconnect with domestic instant messaging tools such as Netease Paobao.In his view, there is still no operational model for effective "interconnection".
Ma Huateng's attitude of taking user value as the reason and profit as the ultimate consideration sounds very uncomfortable to many fundamentalist liberals who firmly believe that "the world is flat", and it is the first time that people have left people with the impression of "refusing to open up". impression.However, this may be the nature of commercial competition.A similar case happened in the United States two years later: In October 2007, in order to stop the rapid rise of Facebook, Microsoft’s Hotmail classified many invitation letters from Facebook as spam, resulting in a decline in the growth of Facebook users. Almost 10%, in the end, the two sat down to negotiate, Zuckerberg agreed to Microsoft's investment request, and the latter obtained a 70% stake for $2.4 million.
MSN used "interconnection" to create a public opinion offensive and was aggressive, which made Ma Huateng a little upset. On October 2005, 10, Tencent held a new product release conference for the QQ 27 version in Beijing. Tencent has never had a tradition of holding a release conference for a single version, and it has never held one since.The temporary motion was proposed by Ma Huateng, who decided to use this occasion to "speak clearly at once."
At the press conference, Ma Huateng announced the latest data: as of June 2005, 6, the number of registered accounts of Tencent QQ has reached 30 million, which is equivalent to the sum of the population of the United States and Japan, and the monthly active accounts have exceeded 4.4 million, the highest. At the same time, the number of online users has exceeded 1.7 million.Then, Ma Huateng announced: "China's instant messaging applications are currently leading the world, and the next stage of development of instant messaging will also enter the stage of full socialization of instant messaging led by China."
This is the first time Ma Huateng has faced the media and systematically expounded his views on the instant messaging industry. "He was actually very nervous. The manuscript was drawn up in advance. On the plane, he had been practicing reciting." Xu Chenye said.
In this speech, Ma Huateng proposed to redefine instant communication.
He believes: "Many instant messaging products represented by Tencent QQ are no longer a simple communication tool, but a platform for information, communication and interaction, leisure and entertainment, voice, video, music on demand, online games, and online transactions. , BBS, Blog (blog), information sharing and other new applications can be developed based on this platform, and are changing people's lifestyles at an unprecedented speed. Chinese netizens are already at the forefront of the era of instant messaging applications, a new instant The communication era will be driven by China, and China's instant messaging community will develop into the world's largest single-cultural community in a short period of time."
Furthermore, he proposed three stages of development of instant messaging: from "technology-driven" mode to "application-driven" and then to "service and user-driven" mode.In this transformation, the development of the instant messaging industry will show six major trends: application entertainment, community and interaction, personal information processing, wireless Internet resource integration, security, and localized applications.
Application entertainment - users' demand for entertainment other than instant messaging and chatting is constantly increasing, and more diversified entertainment applications have become the key development direction of instant messaging in the future.In order to meet users' increasing demand for entertainment applications, many instant messaging service providers are constantly developing rich applications based on instant messaging platforms, and new applications such as avatars, magic emoticons, and virtual pets emerge in an endless stream.
Community and interactivity—instant messaging services are being integrated into the daily lives of netizens to the greatest extent, just like network applications such as e-mail, search engines, and Internet browsing information. Online life will become a hot spot for Internet applications in the next two to three years.At the same time, a pure communication tool is being endowed with new connotations, becoming a rich personal space.
Personal information processing—as a terminal for information transmission, the personal information processing function of instant messaging will fundamentally determine the vitality of instant messaging products themselves, which not only includes information interaction functions such as text dialogue, voice calls, and video exchanges, but also It includes the information sharing function of file transfer and sending pictures, and also includes the effective saving of chat records, and the information management function of uploading and downloading.Humanized design pattern will become the decisive factor of instant communication.
Integration of wireless Internet resources——With the continuous research and development of mobile phone applications, wireless Internet access has become the darling of network users, and users are also favored by mobile phones to log in or receive information from the Internet, especially instant messages or messages.In the future, the integration of the Internet and wireless networks is an inevitable destination, and the interconnection of instant messaging and wireless networks is also the only way.With the opening of 3G, instant messaging users have higher mobile demands, and the mobile value-added services of instant messaging will have a great potential.
Security—Security has become the fundamental way to guarantee basic applications of instant messaging in the future.Since the entire industry has not formulated instant messaging security standards, many popular instant messaging software currently store and transmit plaintext, and the password input is encrypted easily.In this regard, Tencent is very willing to cooperate with the vast number of peers to jointly formulate instant messaging security standards and improve the anti-risk and anti-virus capabilities of instant messaging.
Localized application——With the strengthening of personal attributes and the extension of application scope of instant messaging products, integration with localized applications will become the main development trend of instant messaging products.This trend of integration will first be reflected in the management and analysis of local user resources by instant messaging service providers, the understanding of local culture, and the continuous optimization of product applications based on the needs of local users.
In the future, this is a speech that "sees the future". Ma Huateng saw the huge wealth value of entertainment to China's Internet economy, saw the concept of communityization and localization that became popular later, and saw the prospect of "Internet mobile phones" , He also saw the importance of safety - five years later, it is in this field that he will encounter the most severe challenge.The only thing Ma Huateng didn't see was openness, which is where the drama lies. His speech this time is a tough response to the interconnection between Microsoft and Yahoo.
Reporters from more than 50 media were invited to participate in Tencent's press conference.No one cares about how much the QQ2005 version has improved in function.Ma Huateng's recitations were well-spoken, but lacked skill. His speech content was published on the technology channels of major news portals, but it hardly aroused any discussion.The only concern of the reporters was: "Why is Tencent unwilling to communicate with MSN?" His redefinition of instant messaging was interpreted as "strategic defense." A reporter from "Beijing Modern Business Daily" wrote: "Recently, it has been reported that many small and medium-sized instant messaging vendors are also seeking interoperability with Yahoo and MSN to create an 'anti-QQ alliance', which undoubtedly intensifies the pressure on Tencent. Under the premise of interconnection and interoperability, the only choice is to provoke a dispute over industry standards."
what msn did wrong
Tencent's "avoiding war" strategy did not give Microsoft the opportunity to "borrow a ladder to go upstairs".Next, it depends on how far the MSN China team can go.
Since the launch of MSN Chinese Online in May 2005, nine partners have brought in a certain amount of income. According to the principle of sharing advertising revenue, the advertising revenue of the MSN platform will be around 5 million yuan by the end of the year, which is almost equivalent to At that time, Tencent's online advertising revenue and the number of partners gradually increased to more than 9.However, the "big company disease" of multinational corporations soon made it difficult for Luo Chuan and Xiong Minghua to survive.As a market competition strategy, MSN, which is at a high brand position, only needs to repeat what Tencent has done to take away most of the market share. Chuan and Xiong Minghua didn't even have such a chance.
The first problem is the disorder of the command system.
An unbelievable fact is: within the Microsoft management system, Luo Chuan's marketing department and Xiong Minghua's R&D center report to the two regional superiors respectively, and there is no affiliation between the two, that is to say, in the Chinese market In fact, MSN does not have a person in charge of coordinating the overall situation.Xiong Minghua's team undertook a lot of research and development tasks, and the technology development for the Chinese version of MSN only accounted for 1/5 of its work.While Beijing's Microsoft China launched MSN to a high profile, that may not be the case in Seattle, where Bill Gates and Ballmer are going all out to fight Google and AOL.Since the business in China only accounts for 2% of Microsoft's global business, and MSN is a sub-project, Seattle hardly has any energy to take a look at Shanghai Messen.As the general manager of a department in the regional market, Luo Chuan's power is very limited. According to Shanghai Messen's internal report, even the general manager, most of his functions must be reported for approval in Microsoft's global system, and can be approved by himself. The projects are limited to contracts with "total payments equal to or less than $50."
If Tencent regards its competition with MSN as a war, then in Microsoft's view, this is not even a battle, at most it is an innocuous local battle.
Second, Microsoft's global development model is difficult to adapt to regional market competition.
MSN's technology research and development direction is controlled by Microsoft's headquarters, which is a global chess game, and there are not many localization considerations for the Chinese market.For the development of each function of MSN, it needs to be submitted to the US headquarters for demonstration, and the environment of each country is very different. As an Asian regional market, the demand put forward by China is always unable to be queued.This is undoubtedly a classic dilemma for multinational companies in a regional market.
For example, the function of offline messaging.The engineers of the China R&D Center put forward this demand as early as the beginning of 2005, but they were not even qualified to submit it to the decision-making meeting for discussion.After countless fights, it was not until 2008 that Microsoft headquarters approved the development, and at this time the battle had already ended.
Another example is the function of virtual props similar to QQ show. The MSN version in South Korea already has exactly the same functions. However, MSN in South Korea is a joint venture with a local company. Due to the protracted copyright negotiations, it has been delayed in introducing it into China.This kind of hysteresis and fetters in the development mechanism has made MSN have always failed in terms of user experience and revenue generation of value-added services.
Compared with QQ, the most serious criticism of MSN is that the large file transfer function lags behind.In almost all BBS discussion forums, young software engineers are laughing at MSN, and many business people abandon MSN because this rigid demand cannot be met.In this regard, Xiong Minghua seemed helpless.
"Microsoft's engineers are fully capable of doing this well. The problem is that MSN puts all user data in servers in the United States, and the Chinese government is very dissatisfied with this, which directly leads to us negotiating with data centers around the world. , it was not smooth. Some cities, especially the telecommunications departments of central cities such as Shanghai and Beijing, were unwilling to cooperate with us or put forward many restrictive conditions, while foreign companies were not allowed to independently build their own data centers in China. The consequence is, When MSN data is transferred through telecom servers in various places, the efficiency is very low.”
Two functions of MSN have been welcomed by users.MSN Spaces, an American-incubated space, became very popular after it was introduced to China. It has social components and the most fashionable blog form.Xiong Minghua appointed Zheng Zhihao as the person in charge of this product.The other is "MSN Robot", which can realize man-machine dialogue.However, due to the lack of basic communication functions such as offline messaging and file transfer, as well as the inexhaustible overall planning strategy, MSN has never really threatened the basic disk of QQ.
Third, Luo Chuan's original subcontracting cooperation model has caused confusion in operation.
The partners introduced to the MSN platform have different industries, different demands, and are all eager to make a profit. As a result, the channel styles of the Chinese website vary greatly, and the price gaps are very large, and there is even a phenomenon of dismantling each other and lowering prices.Shanghai Meisien was simply unable to coordinate in the middle, and over time, the value of advertising shrank significantly, and Luo Chuan's so-called vision of "building a white-collar portal" completely fell through.Bao Yueqiao, the chairman of Ourgame at the time, disclosed a statistic: Ourgame invested 600 million yuan to become MSN’s only game platform partner, but after one month of operation, only 20 game users were imported from MSN to Ourgame!Ourgame terminated the cooperation after one quarter.
MSN’s attempt to snatch a piece of telecom value-added services has also encountered a very bad time. China Mobile has begun to clean up the gray value-added services in “Monternet” on a large scale. China Mobile warned MSN China to slow down the development of monthly SMS service after the user agreed to open a paid SMS without permission, and its revenue was almost negligible.
Fourth, the interconnection between Microsoft and Yahoo has not achieved the expected "milestone effect".
As Ma Huateng predicted at the beginning, MSN and Yahoo Messenger can only communicate with each other about their online status and basic messages, such as voice, video, and MSN Spaces. Think it's two networks.Gradually, this widely favored model has become less popular.
If the above-mentioned passivity all occurred at the mechanism and system level, then by the beginning of 2006, Microsoft had committed two very gorgeous strategic mistakes one after another.
On December 2005, 12, Microsoft released the Live strategy, announcing that starting next year, Microsoft's series of services will be integrated into a new Windows Live platform, "These improvements make Live Messenger more like a management system for managing continuous information." server and social networking hub”.
In the eyes of engineers in MSN China, the Live strategy is tantamount to a disaster.Xiong Minghua said despondently: "In the new version, MSN is gone! It is wrapped in a seemingly more functional and powerful system, but it is no longer an independent instant messaging client, It was reduced from a platform-level product to a plug-in.” Zheng Zhihao, who was in charge of MSN Spaces operations at the time, later said that in essence, Microsoft was always a software technology company rather than an Internet company, and it did not operate an Internet product. experience.
"When we see Live Messenger, we know the war is coming to an end." Zhang Zhidong said.
By June 2006, Microsoft China then made a decision that made Tencent happy: it announced the termination of its search cooperation with Yahoo China, and Microsoft would launch its own "Live Search".That means the unraveling of the interoperability alliance that was so much fanfare a year ago.
Physically and mentally exhausted, Xiong Minghua and Luo Chuan left Microsoft one after another.
Xiong Minghua appeared in Tencent soon after.Over the past year or so, he has deeply felt the difficulty of a multinational company's survival in China, and all kinds of powerlessness made him want to change the environment.And during this time, every holiday, he could always receive greeting text messages from Zhang Zhidong from Shenzhen. "Although he didn't mention the matter of joining again, I can feel his sincerity." Xiong Minghua, who joined Tencent, was appointed as Tencent's joint CTO. A second face from an international company.Zheng Zhihao and Yin Yu from Xiong Minghua's former MSN department also came to Tencent, and they will serve as vice presidents of the social platform and instant messaging departments respectively in the future.Tencent's unexpected gain in this campaign is that it has obtained a group of high-level technical talents.
Since then, MSN has been removed from Tencent's long list of "enemies".According to the data of Analysys International, by the second quarter of 2008, QQ's market share had increased to 80.2%, while MSN had shrunk to 4.1%, surpassed by China Mobile Fetion.With the defeat of MSN, other companies with smaller market shares have successively weakened their investment in instant messaging products, and the "anti-QQ alliance" has collapsed. Tencent has won a difficult defense battle in its main battlefield.
In October 2010, Microsoft announced the closure of the MSN Spaces blog service, and more than 10 million users around the world were facing relocation. However, the blog service provider provided by Microsoft did not have a Chinese version for Chinese users, which almost abandoned millions of users.The Qzone department chaired by Zheng Zhihao immediately developed a blog relocation tool and advertised "Qzone is waiting for you to go home". More than 3000% of MSN Chinese users moved their blogs to Tencent.By December 2012, Microsoft announced that it would abandon MSN in favor of the development of Skype.
2005: The Chinese rule the Internet in China
If after the Internet bubble in 2002, Chinese companies embarked on a completely different path of business operations than their American counterparts, then, three years later, around 3, their efforts were tested in the local market, in In almost all segments, such as C2005C (Customer to Consumer), B2C (Business to Customer), online bookstores, search, email, games, news portals, etc., Chinese companies have almost completely outperformed all American competitors. The victory over MSN in the field of communication is just one example.
eBay and Taobao: In March 2003, eBay, the largest eBay in North America, acquired China's largest online trading community, EachNet, for US$3 million at that time, thereby entering the C1.5C market.Almost at the same time, Jack Ma founded Taobao, and confrontational competition broke out between the two. eBay soon fell into internal struggles, and the two entrepreneurs left one after another, while Taobao took more and more customers from eBay abruptly with its resolute free strategy and brutal window pop-up technology.By the end of 2, Taobao had taken away 2005% of the market share, and never gave eBay a chance to turn around.
Amazon and Dangdang: Stunningly similar stories also happened in the B2C field. Around 2004, Dangdang and Joyo shared China's online book market equally. In August, Amazon acquired Joyo for US$8 million.Joyo Amazon changed its previous business strategy of only producing high-quality books and audio-visual products, and tried to transplant Amazon's "big and comprehensive" sales model, which resulted in a significant increase in operating costs, and the entrepreneurial team and 7500% of Joyo's employees left one after another.In the next few years, Dangdang’s market share in the field of books was three times that of Amazon, and the latter had no achievements in its specialty information appliances (80C products), and was almost robbed of the market by JD.com.
Google and Baidu: Sergey Brin and Larry Page, born in 1973, are 5 years younger than Robin Li, but Google was founded 16 months earlier than Baidu.Google's operating income comes from online advertising, among which keyword advertising, that is, pushing advertisements to specific groups of people based on their browsing or search history, is its core technology. However, this model has received cold reception in China. In September 2001, Baidu launched the business model of search engine bidding ranking, that is, companies pay for the ranking of their own web pages, and they are charged according to the number of clicks. Robin Li built a huge regional agency network for this purpose, with more than 9 people. Serving Baidu directly or indirectly.Baidu's approach has been controversial for allegedly interfering with the fairness of search, but it has achieved great commercial success.Google search officially entered China in August 20, and was forced to leave in 2005, failing to catch up with Baidu.
Hotmail and Netease Mailbox: Microsoft's Hotmail used to be the benchmark for all Chinese companies engaged in email business, but it never really gained a large market share. Ding Lei's NetEase mailbox has long adhered to the strategy of technical optimization and free upgrades, making Hotmail couldn't find an opportunity to make money.
Of all the American companies, Yahoo is in the worst position.Because its founder has Chinese descent, Yahoo launched Chinese Yahoo in May 1998, putting forward the slogan "Find anything, communicate with everyone". It was once the number one Chinese portal, and almost all News portals all aim to learn from Yahoo.But soon, it was abandoned by users due to its slow response to news events and vague positioning. It dabbled in portals, mailboxes, search and instant messaging tools, but none of them could squeeze into the top three.Yang Zhiyuan's biggest achievement in China is that he and Sun Zhengyi invested in Ma Yun, who has a strange face.By August 5, Alibaba announced the acquisition of all assets of Yahoo China.
The above-mentioned cases constitute an "overall incident" and clearly show that when the Internet economy enters the "service and user-driven" stage pointed out by Ma Huateng, regional cultural, consumption and policy characteristics become the basis for corporate competition. The primary consideration indicator, and in this regard, the yellow-skinned locals who grew up eating rice with chopsticks and breathing the rural air certainly have an advantage over Americans or Europeans from afar.Ding Zhizhong, who produces Anta sports shoes, once used a vivid metaphor to describe the different understandings of Chinese and American companies on the Chinese consumer market. He said: "Nike and Adidas basketball shoes are mainly worn on plastic floors, and elasticity is an important assessment index. , and only 1% of Anta’s consumers can play on plastic floors, and the rest are on concrete floors. Anta is more concerned about how children who play on concrete floors can keep their feet from twisting.” Ding Zhizhong’s words are used in The Internet industry is also very "fit".
For a long time, Chinese Internet people worshiped the American model and followed suit. However, after 2005, on hundreds of Internet forums every year, it is rare to see Americans pointing fingers at the Chinese market. They can talk about trends and technologies, but when it comes to their views on the Chinese market, everyone will grin.
(End of this chapter)
For strategic considerations, the first target I choose to conquer is often not a vulnerable small company, but the strongest opponent.
—John D. Rockefeller (founder of the Standard Oil Company), "Letters to His Son"
Innovation is always the result of encounter.
— Gerstner (former chairman of IBM)
MSN is here
In August 2004, Xiong Minghua, who had worked at the Microsoft headquarters for nine years, was ordered to return to China to set up the MSN China R&D Center, which he decided to build in Shanghai.Almost at the same time, Microsoft established the MSN China Market Center in Beijing, headed by Luo Chuan, an employee in China who has 8 years of service experience.This means that the most heavyweight enemy in Tencent's history has appeared.
In the past two years, news about MSN's imminent entry into China has been rampant.Unlike NetEase and Sina, which are making great fanfare, Microsoft has never had a dedicated MSN China operation team, but its number of users is three times that of NetEase.According to the data from the survey agency Analysys International, in 3, without any publicity and localization support, MSN's market share in China's instant messaging was 2005%, although it was far from QQ's 10.58%. It was already the second largest instant messaging software in China at that time.
More importantly, among the approximately 2000 million business users, Tencent users account for approximately 950 million, accounting for 47%, and MSN users account for approximately 1075 million, accounting for 53%. 95% come from lost users of Tencent QQ.When these data were reported to the Microsoft headquarters, the Americans were taken aback. Under the leadership of Luo Chuan and other employees in China, Microsoft made the decision to separate the MSN business and implement localized operations.
Xiong Minghua, born in 1965, is the most senior Chinese product manager in Microsoft's MSN business unit.In his early years, he worked in a software company founded by a Taiwanese, and was engaged in the development of Windows Sinicization technology. He is an expert in device drivers with practical experience. In folk terms, he is an expert in developing virus software.After going to the United States, he first worked in IBM and joined Microsoft in 1996. At that time, Bill Gates was launching an attack on Netscape. Xiong Minghua worked as a product manager in the IE browser department and participated in the development of IE3.5 to IE5.0. Version development, "witnessed the whole process of how Microsoft 'strangled' Netscape". In 1999, Xiong Minghua entered the Windows department again and participated in the development of Windows 2000 and MSN. "After 2001, when my options expired, I wanted to retire or return to China to start a business." After that, he often returned to China, exchanged interviews with Lenovo, Founder and other companies, served as a visiting professor at Zhejiang University, and published "Software Development" Science and Art" and "Software Development Process and Cases" two professional books.During a lecture, there were Ren Yuxin and Wu Xiaoguang among the students in the audience.
Two weeks after Xiong Minghua returned to Shanghai, Zhang Zhidong found him through a friend.
At dusk, they met at Canglongfang Restaurant at the junction of Dongping Road and Hengshan Road. Zhang Zhidong brought two bottles of red wine with him.They chatted for four or five hours, and Xiong Minghua was deeply impressed by Zhang Zhidong's proficiency in technology. Before saying goodbye, Zhang Zhidong directly asked Xiong Minghua: "Are you willing to join Tencent?"
This is just a small detail before the war between the two armies.Xiong Minghua laughed at Zhang Zhidong's invitation. "At that time, MSN had no imaginary enemy in its eyes. We didn't take QQ seriously. Its UI (interface design) was too bad, and its software development level was not high." Xiong Minghua quickly formed a team of more than 30 people. R&D team.
Zheng Zhihao, who returned from Seattle with Xiong Minghua and later switched to Tencent, recalled a detail: "We went to the university to recruit college students, and we were surrounded by people at every recruitment site. The crowd was full of people, and the resumes piled up. They saw Microsoft It was as if they had seen a god, and they terrified us completely.” More than a year later, Zheng Zhihao, who jumped to Tencent, went to the campus to recruit students, “Almost none of the top 10 students are willing to come to Tencent. Excellent talents. At this time, I suddenly realized that Tencent was fighting Microsoft with 'second-rate' or even 'third-rate' talents."
"Acquisition" Zhang Xiaolong
In the early years of the 21st century, the fear of Microsoft was almost an instinct of companies in the IT industry. In 1984, among the top ten personal computer software companies in the United States, Microsoft ranked second. By 2001, Microsoft ranked first, and the other nine companies that year had disappeared from the rankings.Microsoft dominates 9% of the world's computer interfaces, Windows operating system, Offices office software, IE browser, and the acquired Hotmail mailbox, Skype Internet phone, constitute a daunting giant platform, Bill Gates defeated it through the bundling strategy Netscape's story is not far behind.
In the Chinese market, Gates adopted a strategy of allowing piracy. In 1998, he told "Fortune" magazine: "As long as the Chinese do piracy, we hope they can pirate Microsoft. They will become addicted to piracy, and in the next 10 years, we will find ways to get back the piracy." Facts That's why Microsoft didn't start to crack down on piracy in the Chinese market until 2008.
After Microsoft announced its MSN localization strategy, many people from the capital market to the Internet industry believed that the end of Tencent might be coming.Xu Chenye, who is in charge of public affairs, recalled that once he went to an Internet forum, at least two people came over and asked him for confirmation in a low voice: "I heard that you Tencent intends to let MSN acquire it?" In the letter to Ma Huateng, he wrote: "QQ group is not a social network. Thanks to QQ for popularizing the concept of instant messaging to Chinese children. When they grow up, work, and have money, they will slowly transfer to MSN. , seamless switching.” Inside Tencent, although the atmosphere of tension is getting heavier, in the view of Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong, it is not an easy task for MSN to shake the basic market of QQ.As Toynbee reveals, "High-level civilizations have always been born in extremely difficult rather than exceptionally superior environments. The greater the challenge, the stronger the stimulus."
On September 2004, 9, Tencent launched the official version of QQ in 9, which was the first major revision of QQ after Tencent went public.This version is also another classic version after the August 2004 version. It has three major technical features: first, it strengthens the network transmission function, greatly improves the speed of file transfer, and supports resuming uploads from breakpoints; second , launched QQ network hard drive and interactive space; third, improved the organizational structure of QQ groups, and designed "groups within groups" on the basis of group chats.These improvements can be described as "rigid requirements" for users of instant messaging, and thus are enthusiastically sought after.What makes Ma Huateng especially happy is that the acceleration of network disk and transmission speed is a tool improvement, which is very attractive to business people.
At an executive meeting, Wu Xiaoguang told a true story that he heard: Microsoft sent a market researcher to conduct a user survey in an office building in Beijing, and a user filled in 5000 yuan in the "monthly income" item of the questionnaire. , The researcher took the questionnaire back: "I'm sorry, you are not our target user." All the senior executives of Tencent leaned forward and backward with laughter.
What worries Ma Huateng the most is that QQ has always had a poor reputation in the business market—even though the new version has made many improvements.In the central city office buildings at that time, a computer with QQ hanging on it would be the object of ridicule.Many companies expressly stipulate that QQ is not allowed to be used during working hours. In their view, QQ is only a tool for chatting and striking up conversations, and MSN is a necessity for office informatization.
"We don't have the ability to solve this embarrassing problem in a short time, but if we can find a blocking product, maybe the situation will be better." Moving forward along this line of thought, everyone discussed a platform-level product—— E-mail. "For business people, instant messaging tools are closely related to mailboxes. Tencent's QQ mailbox is not good enough. Among the more than 1 million QQ users, less than 1% use QQ mailboxes. Microsoft's Hotmail is too strong. We have to fill this board."
The best way to replenish the board is to acquire Hotmail's strongest competitor in China, so Foxmail has entered Tencent's field of vision.
The developer of Foxmail is Zhang Xiaolong, a legendary software engineer in South China.Zhang Xiaolong studied at the Telecommunications Department of Huazhong University of Science and Technology. After graduating from graduate school in 1994, he went to work at Jingyue Computer.Around 1996, he independently wrote Foxmail. "Foxmail does not imitate anyone, it is an email client earlier than Outlook. I remember that when I wrote Foxmail, Ding Lei was writing Webmail. The difference is that Ding Lei's mailbox is based on web development, while mine is based on Client. At that time, China’s Internet connection was very slow, but the client was faster.” After Foxmail came out, the number of users of the Chinese version exceeded 400 million within a year, and the users of the English version spread over more than 20 countries, ranking among the “Top Ten Domestic software".
Therefore, Zhang Xiaolong is regarded by the industry as a representative of the second generation of software engineers after Qiu Bojun.Zhang Xiaolong is introverted and doesn't like to mingle. He is an amateur tennis player.He has little interest in business. When Foxmail was in full swing, he never thought of forming a company for commercial operation.After that, he joined Lingtong Company under the Guangdong Academy of Sciences. In 1998, Zhang Xiaolong sold Foxmail to Shenzhen Boda for 1200 million yuan.Then came the bursting of the Internet bubble. Boda has never found a way to make Foxmail profitable. Zhang Xiaolong had to take more than 10 engineers to work as an enterprise email server. This is a small market and it can be said that it is lingering.
In February 2005, Liu Chiping went to acquire Foxmail on behalf of Tencent, and Zeng Liqing executed it together with him.The negotiation between Tencent and Zhang Xiaolong was a smooth fit from the very beginning because of their similar temperament and the same understanding of the Internet.Negotiations progressed quickly. On March 2, Tencent announced that it had formally signed an agreement to acquire Foxmail software and related intellectual property rights. This was the first acquisition case in Tencent's history. The exact purchase price has not been announced so far. .Zhang Xiaolong was unwilling to work in Shenzhen, so Ma Huateng made concessions and established a Guangzhou R&D center with Zhang Xiaolong as the general manager.
Also in February 2005, with the efforts of Wang Dawei, who is in charge of international affairs, Tencent and Google announced a business cooperation.Tencent has already started offering Google's web search service to its domestic users.At the same time, Tencent will also provide AdSense, Google's online advertising service for search results.Google's web search box is embedded in Tencent's major Internet services, including QQ instant messaging client, website, TT browser, Tencent TM and Tencent RTX.
The acquisition of Foxmail and the cooperation with Google are seen as two external defenses for Tencent to deal with the localization of MSN.
Luo Chuan's Triple Attack
Although a lot of preparations have been made, Microsoft China's various bold actions on MSN still make it very difficult for Tencent to parry.
Just over 20 days after Tencent acquired Foxmail, on April 4, Microsoft and Lianhe Investment Co., Ltd. announced in Shanghai the establishment of a joint venture—Shanghai MicroPort Software Co., Ltd. Tang Jun, the newly appointed president of Microsoft (China) Co., Ltd. The signing ceremony was attended by the CEO, the mayor of Shanghai and McGarry Mundi, the chief technology officer of Microsoft.One month later, on the basis of Minimally Invasive, Shanghai Maxen Network Communication Technology Co., Ltd. was established. Microsoft and Lianhe injected capital of 11 million US dollars and 500 million US dollars respectively, and Luo Chuan became the president.Lianhe Investment is an investment-oriented enterprise affiliated to the Shanghai State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission. This joint venture background arouses countless associations.
From the very first day of its establishment, Luo Chuan's idea was to achieve profitability as soon as possible. Therefore, in terms of business development, MSN adopted the most open subcontracting cooperation model.
U.S. Internet companies usually adopt two models to enter the regional market: one is the Yahoo model, which is completely handed over to the local partner for operation, the headquarters provides brand and technical support, and finally only shares the profits.The other model is the Google model, which establishes a huge team of engineers and marketing, and adopts a fully localized operation form.Microsoft is unwilling to lose its dominance over MSN—in the cooperation with Lianhe Investment, although Microsoft’s shareholding ratio is smaller than the other party’s, it strongly stipulates in the agreement that Microsoft will control all the management rights of the company.At the same time, however, Microsoft did not have enough determination to fight a strategic battle. The registered capital of Shanghai Messen was only 800 million US dollars, which means that Microsoft only invested less than 500 million US dollars.Therefore, Luo Chuan decided to adopt a new method, which he called the business model of channel content cooperation.
MSN China launched the MSN Chinese website, which formed a portal-type platform. Luo Chuan invited bids from the public for each channel in a contracted manner.Due to the great reputation of MSN, it quickly attracted many professional partners. Taobao, Shanghai Media, CCID, Renlaiche.com, English Village, Maopu.com, and Lianzhong.com were included in the first batch of lists. , Zhiyun Times, and Beiqingwang 9 large-scale websites, Luo Chuan formed a "joint column" overnight in a vertical and horizontal manner, and some people called it the "Anti-QQ Alliance".The media commented: "MSN China's cooperation model, on the one hand, avoids the risks of foreign joint ventures in terms of content and policies, and at the same time can quickly import MSN Messenger traffic to the website and convert it into income."
The second profit method Luo Chuan resorted to was to quickly cut into the telecom value-added business.He has been immersed in the Chinese market for 10 years, and he is well aware of the huge profits of mobile phone text messages. MSN China invested in the acquisition of Tsinghua Shenxun, a value-added telecommunications service company in Shenzhen, and provided MSN users with a 10-yuan monthly SMS service.Before this, no international Internet company dared to enter this gray area full of controversy and moral hazard.
On October 2005, 10, Luo Chuan got the third good card for attacking: On this day, Yahoo and Microsoft announced that they had reached a "milestone agreement" to enable instant messaging users around the world to achieve interconnection.The industry's first interoperability agreement between the two global instant messaging service providers enables users of MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger to interact, which is expected to form the world's largest instant messaging community, together occupying more than 13% of the global market share, As a result, nearly half of the IM users in the world will be connected for the first time, and the number will exceed 44 million.
Luo Chuan reacted immediately. He stated to the media that as long as the security is guaranteed, MSN is willing to communicate with more IMs including Tencent QQ.
The intercommunication agreement between Yahoo and Microsoft has plunged Tencent into a very passive public opinion vortex this autumn.Almost all the media and experts are cheering for the intercommunication. Many people think: "With the rapid development of MSN and Yahoo Messenger in the Chinese market, especially in the business class, the strength of the two is no less than Tencent. , will further increase its strength, and may even quickly reduce QQ to a weak IM in the business class." The public relations department of MSN China told reporters, please tell Mr. Ma Huateng that President Luo Chuan is willing to communicate with him at any time and any place. Negotiate matters related to interconnection.
Redefine instant messaging
Ma Huateng resolutely rejected the "communication invitation" issued by Luo Chuan.He can always show the uncompromising strength inherent in the blood of Chaoshan people at critical moments, even though this is not like his appearance at all, or not so flattering.
His reason is: we can't risk user value, it's irresponsible.In his view, the three factors of user demand, security, and cost are the key to China Unicom. In fact, the security issue will be resolved sooner or later, but there are still "costs and benefits that need to be discussed clearly. If there is no exchange of tangible value, then There should be complementary intangible values, so that a win-win situation is possible, and only a win-win situation will lead to interconnection.”He refused to negotiate with MSN, nor did he intend to allow QQ to interconnect with domestic instant messaging tools such as Netease Paobao.In his view, there is still no operational model for effective "interconnection".
Ma Huateng's attitude of taking user value as the reason and profit as the ultimate consideration sounds very uncomfortable to many fundamentalist liberals who firmly believe that "the world is flat", and it is the first time that people have left people with the impression of "refusing to open up". impression.However, this may be the nature of commercial competition.A similar case happened in the United States two years later: In October 2007, in order to stop the rapid rise of Facebook, Microsoft’s Hotmail classified many invitation letters from Facebook as spam, resulting in a decline in the growth of Facebook users. Almost 10%, in the end, the two sat down to negotiate, Zuckerberg agreed to Microsoft's investment request, and the latter obtained a 70% stake for $2.4 million.
MSN used "interconnection" to create a public opinion offensive and was aggressive, which made Ma Huateng a little upset. On October 2005, 10, Tencent held a new product release conference for the QQ 27 version in Beijing. Tencent has never had a tradition of holding a release conference for a single version, and it has never held one since.The temporary motion was proposed by Ma Huateng, who decided to use this occasion to "speak clearly at once."
At the press conference, Ma Huateng announced the latest data: as of June 2005, 6, the number of registered accounts of Tencent QQ has reached 30 million, which is equivalent to the sum of the population of the United States and Japan, and the monthly active accounts have exceeded 4.4 million, the highest. At the same time, the number of online users has exceeded 1.7 million.Then, Ma Huateng announced: "China's instant messaging applications are currently leading the world, and the next stage of development of instant messaging will also enter the stage of full socialization of instant messaging led by China."
This is the first time Ma Huateng has faced the media and systematically expounded his views on the instant messaging industry. "He was actually very nervous. The manuscript was drawn up in advance. On the plane, he had been practicing reciting." Xu Chenye said.
In this speech, Ma Huateng proposed to redefine instant communication.
He believes: "Many instant messaging products represented by Tencent QQ are no longer a simple communication tool, but a platform for information, communication and interaction, leisure and entertainment, voice, video, music on demand, online games, and online transactions. , BBS, Blog (blog), information sharing and other new applications can be developed based on this platform, and are changing people's lifestyles at an unprecedented speed. Chinese netizens are already at the forefront of the era of instant messaging applications, a new instant The communication era will be driven by China, and China's instant messaging community will develop into the world's largest single-cultural community in a short period of time."
Furthermore, he proposed three stages of development of instant messaging: from "technology-driven" mode to "application-driven" and then to "service and user-driven" mode.In this transformation, the development of the instant messaging industry will show six major trends: application entertainment, community and interaction, personal information processing, wireless Internet resource integration, security, and localized applications.
Application entertainment - users' demand for entertainment other than instant messaging and chatting is constantly increasing, and more diversified entertainment applications have become the key development direction of instant messaging in the future.In order to meet users' increasing demand for entertainment applications, many instant messaging service providers are constantly developing rich applications based on instant messaging platforms, and new applications such as avatars, magic emoticons, and virtual pets emerge in an endless stream.
Community and interactivity—instant messaging services are being integrated into the daily lives of netizens to the greatest extent, just like network applications such as e-mail, search engines, and Internet browsing information. Online life will become a hot spot for Internet applications in the next two to three years.At the same time, a pure communication tool is being endowed with new connotations, becoming a rich personal space.
Personal information processing—as a terminal for information transmission, the personal information processing function of instant messaging will fundamentally determine the vitality of instant messaging products themselves, which not only includes information interaction functions such as text dialogue, voice calls, and video exchanges, but also It includes the information sharing function of file transfer and sending pictures, and also includes the effective saving of chat records, and the information management function of uploading and downloading.Humanized design pattern will become the decisive factor of instant communication.
Integration of wireless Internet resources——With the continuous research and development of mobile phone applications, wireless Internet access has become the darling of network users, and users are also favored by mobile phones to log in or receive information from the Internet, especially instant messages or messages.In the future, the integration of the Internet and wireless networks is an inevitable destination, and the interconnection of instant messaging and wireless networks is also the only way.With the opening of 3G, instant messaging users have higher mobile demands, and the mobile value-added services of instant messaging will have a great potential.
Security—Security has become the fundamental way to guarantee basic applications of instant messaging in the future.Since the entire industry has not formulated instant messaging security standards, many popular instant messaging software currently store and transmit plaintext, and the password input is encrypted easily.In this regard, Tencent is very willing to cooperate with the vast number of peers to jointly formulate instant messaging security standards and improve the anti-risk and anti-virus capabilities of instant messaging.
Localized application——With the strengthening of personal attributes and the extension of application scope of instant messaging products, integration with localized applications will become the main development trend of instant messaging products.This trend of integration will first be reflected in the management and analysis of local user resources by instant messaging service providers, the understanding of local culture, and the continuous optimization of product applications based on the needs of local users.
In the future, this is a speech that "sees the future". Ma Huateng saw the huge wealth value of entertainment to China's Internet economy, saw the concept of communityization and localization that became popular later, and saw the prospect of "Internet mobile phones" , He also saw the importance of safety - five years later, it is in this field that he will encounter the most severe challenge.The only thing Ma Huateng didn't see was openness, which is where the drama lies. His speech this time is a tough response to the interconnection between Microsoft and Yahoo.
Reporters from more than 50 media were invited to participate in Tencent's press conference.No one cares about how much the QQ2005 version has improved in function.Ma Huateng's recitations were well-spoken, but lacked skill. His speech content was published on the technology channels of major news portals, but it hardly aroused any discussion.The only concern of the reporters was: "Why is Tencent unwilling to communicate with MSN?" His redefinition of instant messaging was interpreted as "strategic defense." A reporter from "Beijing Modern Business Daily" wrote: "Recently, it has been reported that many small and medium-sized instant messaging vendors are also seeking interoperability with Yahoo and MSN to create an 'anti-QQ alliance', which undoubtedly intensifies the pressure on Tencent. Under the premise of interconnection and interoperability, the only choice is to provoke a dispute over industry standards."
what msn did wrong
Tencent's "avoiding war" strategy did not give Microsoft the opportunity to "borrow a ladder to go upstairs".Next, it depends on how far the MSN China team can go.
Since the launch of MSN Chinese Online in May 2005, nine partners have brought in a certain amount of income. According to the principle of sharing advertising revenue, the advertising revenue of the MSN platform will be around 5 million yuan by the end of the year, which is almost equivalent to At that time, Tencent's online advertising revenue and the number of partners gradually increased to more than 9.However, the "big company disease" of multinational corporations soon made it difficult for Luo Chuan and Xiong Minghua to survive.As a market competition strategy, MSN, which is at a high brand position, only needs to repeat what Tencent has done to take away most of the market share. Chuan and Xiong Minghua didn't even have such a chance.
The first problem is the disorder of the command system.
An unbelievable fact is: within the Microsoft management system, Luo Chuan's marketing department and Xiong Minghua's R&D center report to the two regional superiors respectively, and there is no affiliation between the two, that is to say, in the Chinese market In fact, MSN does not have a person in charge of coordinating the overall situation.Xiong Minghua's team undertook a lot of research and development tasks, and the technology development for the Chinese version of MSN only accounted for 1/5 of its work.While Beijing's Microsoft China launched MSN to a high profile, that may not be the case in Seattle, where Bill Gates and Ballmer are going all out to fight Google and AOL.Since the business in China only accounts for 2% of Microsoft's global business, and MSN is a sub-project, Seattle hardly has any energy to take a look at Shanghai Messen.As the general manager of a department in the regional market, Luo Chuan's power is very limited. According to Shanghai Messen's internal report, even the general manager, most of his functions must be reported for approval in Microsoft's global system, and can be approved by himself. The projects are limited to contracts with "total payments equal to or less than $50."
If Tencent regards its competition with MSN as a war, then in Microsoft's view, this is not even a battle, at most it is an innocuous local battle.
Second, Microsoft's global development model is difficult to adapt to regional market competition.
MSN's technology research and development direction is controlled by Microsoft's headquarters, which is a global chess game, and there are not many localization considerations for the Chinese market.For the development of each function of MSN, it needs to be submitted to the US headquarters for demonstration, and the environment of each country is very different. As an Asian regional market, the demand put forward by China is always unable to be queued.This is undoubtedly a classic dilemma for multinational companies in a regional market.
For example, the function of offline messaging.The engineers of the China R&D Center put forward this demand as early as the beginning of 2005, but they were not even qualified to submit it to the decision-making meeting for discussion.After countless fights, it was not until 2008 that Microsoft headquarters approved the development, and at this time the battle had already ended.
Another example is the function of virtual props similar to QQ show. The MSN version in South Korea already has exactly the same functions. However, MSN in South Korea is a joint venture with a local company. Due to the protracted copyright negotiations, it has been delayed in introducing it into China.This kind of hysteresis and fetters in the development mechanism has made MSN have always failed in terms of user experience and revenue generation of value-added services.
Compared with QQ, the most serious criticism of MSN is that the large file transfer function lags behind.In almost all BBS discussion forums, young software engineers are laughing at MSN, and many business people abandon MSN because this rigid demand cannot be met.In this regard, Xiong Minghua seemed helpless.
"Microsoft's engineers are fully capable of doing this well. The problem is that MSN puts all user data in servers in the United States, and the Chinese government is very dissatisfied with this, which directly leads to us negotiating with data centers around the world. , it was not smooth. Some cities, especially the telecommunications departments of central cities such as Shanghai and Beijing, were unwilling to cooperate with us or put forward many restrictive conditions, while foreign companies were not allowed to independently build their own data centers in China. The consequence is, When MSN data is transferred through telecom servers in various places, the efficiency is very low.”
Two functions of MSN have been welcomed by users.MSN Spaces, an American-incubated space, became very popular after it was introduced to China. It has social components and the most fashionable blog form.Xiong Minghua appointed Zheng Zhihao as the person in charge of this product.The other is "MSN Robot", which can realize man-machine dialogue.However, due to the lack of basic communication functions such as offline messaging and file transfer, as well as the inexhaustible overall planning strategy, MSN has never really threatened the basic disk of QQ.
Third, Luo Chuan's original subcontracting cooperation model has caused confusion in operation.
The partners introduced to the MSN platform have different industries, different demands, and are all eager to make a profit. As a result, the channel styles of the Chinese website vary greatly, and the price gaps are very large, and there is even a phenomenon of dismantling each other and lowering prices.Shanghai Meisien was simply unable to coordinate in the middle, and over time, the value of advertising shrank significantly, and Luo Chuan's so-called vision of "building a white-collar portal" completely fell through.Bao Yueqiao, the chairman of Ourgame at the time, disclosed a statistic: Ourgame invested 600 million yuan to become MSN’s only game platform partner, but after one month of operation, only 20 game users were imported from MSN to Ourgame!Ourgame terminated the cooperation after one quarter.
MSN’s attempt to snatch a piece of telecom value-added services has also encountered a very bad time. China Mobile has begun to clean up the gray value-added services in “Monternet” on a large scale. China Mobile warned MSN China to slow down the development of monthly SMS service after the user agreed to open a paid SMS without permission, and its revenue was almost negligible.
Fourth, the interconnection between Microsoft and Yahoo has not achieved the expected "milestone effect".
As Ma Huateng predicted at the beginning, MSN and Yahoo Messenger can only communicate with each other about their online status and basic messages, such as voice, video, and MSN Spaces. Think it's two networks.Gradually, this widely favored model has become less popular.
If the above-mentioned passivity all occurred at the mechanism and system level, then by the beginning of 2006, Microsoft had committed two very gorgeous strategic mistakes one after another.
On December 2005, 12, Microsoft released the Live strategy, announcing that starting next year, Microsoft's series of services will be integrated into a new Windows Live platform, "These improvements make Live Messenger more like a management system for managing continuous information." server and social networking hub”.
In the eyes of engineers in MSN China, the Live strategy is tantamount to a disaster.Xiong Minghua said despondently: "In the new version, MSN is gone! It is wrapped in a seemingly more functional and powerful system, but it is no longer an independent instant messaging client, It was reduced from a platform-level product to a plug-in.” Zheng Zhihao, who was in charge of MSN Spaces operations at the time, later said that in essence, Microsoft was always a software technology company rather than an Internet company, and it did not operate an Internet product. experience.
"When we see Live Messenger, we know the war is coming to an end." Zhang Zhidong said.
By June 2006, Microsoft China then made a decision that made Tencent happy: it announced the termination of its search cooperation with Yahoo China, and Microsoft would launch its own "Live Search".That means the unraveling of the interoperability alliance that was so much fanfare a year ago.
Physically and mentally exhausted, Xiong Minghua and Luo Chuan left Microsoft one after another.
Xiong Minghua appeared in Tencent soon after.Over the past year or so, he has deeply felt the difficulty of a multinational company's survival in China, and all kinds of powerlessness made him want to change the environment.And during this time, every holiday, he could always receive greeting text messages from Zhang Zhidong from Shenzhen. "Although he didn't mention the matter of joining again, I can feel his sincerity." Xiong Minghua, who joined Tencent, was appointed as Tencent's joint CTO. A second face from an international company.Zheng Zhihao and Yin Yu from Xiong Minghua's former MSN department also came to Tencent, and they will serve as vice presidents of the social platform and instant messaging departments respectively in the future.Tencent's unexpected gain in this campaign is that it has obtained a group of high-level technical talents.
Since then, MSN has been removed from Tencent's long list of "enemies".According to the data of Analysys International, by the second quarter of 2008, QQ's market share had increased to 80.2%, while MSN had shrunk to 4.1%, surpassed by China Mobile Fetion.With the defeat of MSN, other companies with smaller market shares have successively weakened their investment in instant messaging products, and the "anti-QQ alliance" has collapsed. Tencent has won a difficult defense battle in its main battlefield.
In October 2010, Microsoft announced the closure of the MSN Spaces blog service, and more than 10 million users around the world were facing relocation. However, the blog service provider provided by Microsoft did not have a Chinese version for Chinese users, which almost abandoned millions of users.The Qzone department chaired by Zheng Zhihao immediately developed a blog relocation tool and advertised "Qzone is waiting for you to go home". More than 3000% of MSN Chinese users moved their blogs to Tencent.By December 2012, Microsoft announced that it would abandon MSN in favor of the development of Skype.
2005: The Chinese rule the Internet in China
If after the Internet bubble in 2002, Chinese companies embarked on a completely different path of business operations than their American counterparts, then, three years later, around 3, their efforts were tested in the local market, in In almost all segments, such as C2005C (Customer to Consumer), B2C (Business to Customer), online bookstores, search, email, games, news portals, etc., Chinese companies have almost completely outperformed all American competitors. The victory over MSN in the field of communication is just one example.
eBay and Taobao: In March 2003, eBay, the largest eBay in North America, acquired China's largest online trading community, EachNet, for US$3 million at that time, thereby entering the C1.5C market.Almost at the same time, Jack Ma founded Taobao, and confrontational competition broke out between the two. eBay soon fell into internal struggles, and the two entrepreneurs left one after another, while Taobao took more and more customers from eBay abruptly with its resolute free strategy and brutal window pop-up technology.By the end of 2, Taobao had taken away 2005% of the market share, and never gave eBay a chance to turn around.
Amazon and Dangdang: Stunningly similar stories also happened in the B2C field. Around 2004, Dangdang and Joyo shared China's online book market equally. In August, Amazon acquired Joyo for US$8 million.Joyo Amazon changed its previous business strategy of only producing high-quality books and audio-visual products, and tried to transplant Amazon's "big and comprehensive" sales model, which resulted in a significant increase in operating costs, and the entrepreneurial team and 7500% of Joyo's employees left one after another.In the next few years, Dangdang’s market share in the field of books was three times that of Amazon, and the latter had no achievements in its specialty information appliances (80C products), and was almost robbed of the market by JD.com.
Google and Baidu: Sergey Brin and Larry Page, born in 1973, are 5 years younger than Robin Li, but Google was founded 16 months earlier than Baidu.Google's operating income comes from online advertising, among which keyword advertising, that is, pushing advertisements to specific groups of people based on their browsing or search history, is its core technology. However, this model has received cold reception in China. In September 2001, Baidu launched the business model of search engine bidding ranking, that is, companies pay for the ranking of their own web pages, and they are charged according to the number of clicks. Robin Li built a huge regional agency network for this purpose, with more than 9 people. Serving Baidu directly or indirectly.Baidu's approach has been controversial for allegedly interfering with the fairness of search, but it has achieved great commercial success.Google search officially entered China in August 20, and was forced to leave in 2005, failing to catch up with Baidu.
Hotmail and Netease Mailbox: Microsoft's Hotmail used to be the benchmark for all Chinese companies engaged in email business, but it never really gained a large market share. Ding Lei's NetEase mailbox has long adhered to the strategy of technical optimization and free upgrades, making Hotmail couldn't find an opportunity to make money.
Of all the American companies, Yahoo is in the worst position.Because its founder has Chinese descent, Yahoo launched Chinese Yahoo in May 1998, putting forward the slogan "Find anything, communicate with everyone". It was once the number one Chinese portal, and almost all News portals all aim to learn from Yahoo.But soon, it was abandoned by users due to its slow response to news events and vague positioning. It dabbled in portals, mailboxes, search and instant messaging tools, but none of them could squeeze into the top three.Yang Zhiyuan's biggest achievement in China is that he and Sun Zhengyi invested in Ma Yun, who has a strange face.By August 5, Alibaba announced the acquisition of all assets of Yahoo China.
The above-mentioned cases constitute an "overall incident" and clearly show that when the Internet economy enters the "service and user-driven" stage pointed out by Ma Huateng, regional cultural, consumption and policy characteristics become the basis for corporate competition. The primary consideration indicator, and in this regard, the yellow-skinned locals who grew up eating rice with chopsticks and breathing the rural air certainly have an advantage over Americans or Europeans from afar.Ding Zhizhong, who produces Anta sports shoes, once used a vivid metaphor to describe the different understandings of Chinese and American companies on the Chinese consumer market. He said: "Nike and Adidas basketball shoes are mainly worn on plastic floors, and elasticity is an important assessment index. , and only 1% of Anta’s consumers can play on plastic floors, and the rest are on concrete floors. Anta is more concerned about how children who play on concrete floors can keep their feet from twisting.” Ding Zhizhong’s words are used in The Internet industry is also very "fit".
For a long time, Chinese Internet people worshiped the American model and followed suit. However, after 2005, on hundreds of Internet forums every year, it is rare to see Americans pointing fingers at the Chinese market. They can talk about trends and technologies, but when it comes to their views on the Chinese market, everyone will grin.
(End of this chapter)
Tap the screen to use advanced tools
Tip: You can use left and right keyboard keys to browse between chapters.
You'll Also Like
-
Steel, Guns, and the Industrial Party that Traveled to Another World
Chapter 764 23 hours ago -
The Journey Against Time, I am the King of Scrolls in a Hundred Times Space
Chapter 141 1 days ago -
Start by getting the cornucopia
Chapter 112 1 days ago -
Fantasy: One hundred billion clones are on AFK, I am invincible
Chapter 385 1 days ago -
American comics: I can extract animation abilities
Chapter 162 1 days ago -
Swallowed Star: Wish Fulfillment System.
Chapter 925 1 days ago -
Cultivation begins with separation
Chapter 274 1 days ago -
Survival: What kind of unscrupulous businessman is this? He is obviously a kind person.
Chapter 167 1 days ago -
Master, something is wrong with you.
Chapter 316 1 days ago -
I have a space for everything, and I can practice automatically.
Chapter 968 1 days ago
