Internet Business Thinking

Chapter 15 WeChat—"Spoiler" or "Successor" in the Mobile Era? (1)
(Section [-]) How did WeChat rise overnight?
I only see Tencent's innovation, but I don't see how Tencent innovates?The overnight rise of WeChat has actually surpassed Ma Huateng’s expectations. This innovative project initiated by a top internal programmer, within Tencent’s strict system, actually built its own independent organization, bypassing KPI assessments, and through repeated trials and errors. , and finally discovered the concept of "making products, less is more", which sounds extremely simple, but "success is reasonable" because it meets the user's experience needs.

Xi Guohua, chairman of China Mobile, is looking for reasons for the decline in SMS revenue.This piece of "cake" was originally the sweetest source of profit for China Mobile, but now it has been "secretly stolen".According to the 2012 financial report, China Mobile's SMS revenue was 464.62 billion yuan, which was lower than the 2010 billion yuan in 468.89.Who "stolen" 4.27 million?
To be precise, no one "steals", but some new forces from the mobile Internet have made China Mobile's 4.27 million SMS charges a free lunch for the public.Just ask, if you send 1800 text messages a year, according to China Mobile’s 1 cents fee per message, you will have to pay China Mobile 180 yuan a year.If you download a free IM (Instant Messenger, instant messaging, hereinafter referred to as) software like Tencent WeChat in your mobile phone, will you still contribute to China Mobile?
WeChat is challenging authority, but more importantly, it has brought us greater freedom of choice in the era of mobile internet.Maybe you will say that this world is absurd, we have been reduced to relying on computers, mobile phones, and so-called IM software to maintain the relationship between people, but there is always a reasonable side to existence.Please remember, it’s not that WeChat chose us, but that even if we don’t use WeChat, we will choose another IM method. It’s just that WeChat has convinced many people that if you don’t use it, it’s like you didn’t use Weibo, you will be OUT !

Big star Jackie Chan has also become a WeChat control

Look at the people around you, they may not know the relationship between WeChat and Tencent, but suddenly one day, a friend said "you add my WeChat", just like that, WeChat was quickly used by private circles, Even Xu Jinglei and Jackie Chan were deeply involved.

Compared with Xu Jinglei, Jackie Chan is more active on WeChat. After "The Manager" connected with Jackie Chan through the "public platform" on WeChat, it actually got a response from Jackie Chan, and has maintained normal communication since then.On WeChat, Jackie Chan and "The Manager" talked about the smog in Beijing the most, and sometimes they would recommend a few movies.It seems that Jackie Chan is very concerned and willing to this kind of personal communication.

At least a year ago, Jackie Chan was still an anti-"pan-socialization" person. When he was having dinner with his son Jaycee Jaycee, he saw Jaycee Jaycee's head buried in Weibo, so he angrily grabbed Jaycee Jaycee's cell phone and threw it out of the window.But now, he has not only played Weibo himself, but has also become a "WeChat control".

But don’t get me wrong, WeChat won’t become the domain of the elite just like Sina Weibo because of Xu Jinglei’s and Jackie Chan’s love. On the contrary, it is an IM with very common characteristics.

Jiang Ye, a brother in Hangzhou, discovered that WeChat can also change his business.Jiang Ye used the function of "making friends nearby" on WeChat to build a mobile "friend group". He originally thought that it would be convenient to communicate with his buddies at any time, but he found that after using this mobile group, they can also schedule together vehicle.Therefore, Jiang Ye and more than 20 brothers simply formed the "Hangzhou Taxi Reservation WeChat Team".Now, the team has 100 cars, and each brother has his own number. "The number of passengers in my WeChat code book has expanded from dozens of people at that time to more than 500 people. Everyone has become friends. If I am short on time and there is no time to do business, I will transfer it to other brothers in WeChat." Jiang Jiang Ye told "Manager".

It is hard to believe that it took Tencent only 2 years to achieve 3 million users of WeChat.In a "WeChat Mobile Communication Software Industry Development Report" provided by China Internet Lab to "Manager", two key data about WeChat are shown: in all social IM, from zero to 1 million users In the speed comparison, WeChat is only 5 months longer than its own Tencent Weibo, ranking second in the industry with Apple's iMessage at a speed of 15 months, and ranking first in the world in terms of mobile IM scale.

Some people say that Tencent has transplanted the strategic gene of "blocking demons and killing demons, Buddhas blocking and killing Buddhas" in the Internet to the era of mobile Internet.In fact, even Ma Huateng himself did not expect that WeChat is more popular than mobile QQ, and even defeated most mobile IM opponents.

An unexpected business opportunity

Why did WeChat become famous overnight?According to Kai-fu Lee, it is because of top talents like Zhang Xiaolong that Tencent has WeChat.

Who is Zhang Xiaolong?
According to public information, Zhang Xiaolong's reputation in the IT circle in his early years was no less than that of Qiu Bojun, Wang Zhidong, Bao Yueqiao and others. It was the Foxmail mailbox developed by him that established Zhang Xiaolong's status in the world.Zhang Xiaolong has always hoped to make Foxmail an email tool that everyone is willing to use, but he suffered from funding problems for team building and later development, so he "committed" to a company called "Boda" in 2004.Unexpectedly, a year later, "Boda" was forced to liquidate due to a broken chain of investment shareholders' funds.

At that time, Tencent was facing its first organizational change in seven years since its founding.Because the belief in Peter Drucker's "federal decentralization" theory can stimulate the innovation of various grassroots organizations, Tencent, which only had more than 7 employees at that time, actually gave birth to as many as 2000 organizational departments.Ma Huateng originally hoped to create an environment that could promote innovation competition and exchange among various departments, but things backfired.Various departments work independently and compete with each other for projects, causing internal friction.Ma Huateng was forced to carry out organizational changes, and finally merged 30 organizations into a "big department system": including the four major business systems of wireless, Internet, interactive entertainment, and network media, and the four major lines of enterprise development, functional lines, service lines, and security architecture lines support system.At the same time, Ma Huateng also sacrificed the KPI assessment and the elimination system of the bottom 30%.

Although this round of organizational changes allowed Tencent to break the original organizational inertia, it also caused internal injuries.In particular, many employees in the QQ R&D department jumped to the then rival Microsoft MSN because they could not accept this radical change. As a result, there was a crisis in the QQ R & D link.

It was during this period that Ma Huateng heard the news that "Boda" was going to be sold.Afterwards, he almost didn't get entangled in the negotiation of the M&A price, and took out 4000 million, and took all of "Boda" and Zhang Xiaolong's Foxmail team into his pocket.Ma Huateng said at the time that he "fancy Foxmail's technology and customers."

After Zhang Xiaolong joined Tencent, Ma Huateng got two rewards: on QQ, the mailbox module was implanted for the first time, which made QQ more sticky to users. ; Foxmail has become the only email software in China that can compete with Microsoft Outlook.

However, in the following 6 years, Zhang Xiaolong played a silent person inside Tencent.According to a Tencent employee close to Zhang Xiaolong: "Allen (Zhang Xiaolong's English name) is a quiet person. Apart from working in front of the computer at work, he rarely hears him speak. The topic he communicates with us most is books."

What books did Zhang Xiaolong read?According to his co-workers, Zhang Xiaolong likes to watch "Out of Control" (written by Kevin Kelly), "Creativity" (written by Chen Fang), "War of the Sexes" (written by Olivia Judson), and "Road to Serfdom" (by Friedrich Hayek) and other books. "Manager" consulted these books, trying to find Zhang Xiaolong's innovation motivation for developing WeChat in the future, and finally, "Manager" fixed its attention on the book "Out of Control".

"Out of Control" is a "prophetic" book written by American Kevin Kelly, which describes the author's roaming to the forefront of technology, society and economy.Some of the concepts predicted in the book are emerging today.These concepts include cloud computing, Internet of Things, virtual reality, agile development, collaboration, win-win, online community, network economy, etc.There is a sentence in the book that is particularly important: "Maybe a key species is missing, but once this species is reintroduced, it has the potential to restore order to the entire ecosystem."

Zhang Xiaolong said that when he saw Kik as a mobile IM tool for the first time in early 2010, his eyes lit up: "In today's out-of-control mobile Internet application competition ecology, a 'species' that changes the order has finally appeared. "

Kik is a new mobile IM method developed by the Canadian company Kik interactive in 2009. It is characterized by providing free sending and receiving SMS services, and can provide cross-operator and cross-platform social services; its function is: by reading The address book of the user's mobile phone is transplanted and the user relationship is rebuilt.Unfortunately for Kik, it was attacked by RIM, which produces BlackBerry mobile phones. RIM found that Kik in the BlackBerry platform software store is more valuable than BBM (Black Berry Messenger), a built-in integrated IM software launched by itself. Advanced because Kik works across platforms, while BBM is only available to BlackBerry users.In order to protect its own interests, RIM not only kicked Kik out of its own application platform, but also sued Kik Interactive for patent infringement.

After learning about what happened to Kik, Zhang Xiaolong immediately realized that a huge opportunity was being born: If Tencent borrowed Kik’s concept and took advantage of Kik’s stagnation period of patent disputes, it would launch the same IM at the fastest speed, and it would be available in China and even around the world. The field of mobile IM will quickly grab a seat.

Growing wildly through trial and error
In October 2010, Ma Huateng, who had not met Zhang Xiaolong for a long time, received an email from Zhang Xiaolong.The general idea is that free mobile IM like overseas Kik is about to rise in the era of mobile Internet. It is recommended that Tencent adapt to the situation and start a new mobile IM project immediately.However, Zhang Xiaolong reminded in the letter that if the project starts and succeeds, the biggest risk is the impact on QQ.

Ma Huateng is caught in a tangle: on the one hand, Tencent has already had similar strategic thinking, but has not yet formulated an implementation plan; on the other hand, Ma Huateng cannot judge how much Tencent’s “Kik” will do to Tencent’s fortune QQ once it is tested successfully. However, Ma Huateng was hit by Zhang Xiaolong's words.What Zhang Xiaolong said was: "In the entry competition of the mobile Internet, Tencent's current mobile QQ is just moving QQ to the mobile phone, which is no different from the PC model." These words are almost to the point!
In the end, with the attitude of giving it a try, Ma Huateng decided to start the project, named it WeChat, and gave Zhang Xiaolong two passes: the first one was for 1 million project research and development funds; the second one was for existing QQ resources To graft.However, Ma Huateng did not give Zhang Xiaolong a research and development organization, but told Zhang Xiaolong, "People, you choose yourself. After forming a team, you don't need to perform KPI assessment like other departments."

According to the theory of innovation funnel: whether WeChat will finally stand out, Ma Huateng has no idea, but he decided not to use more power of the company in the early stage, but to allow a small team that seems to be outside the management system to carry out free innovation—Ma Huateng thinks Take a small gamble.

When the project started, the first thing Zhang Xiaolong did was to organize his own team.People can neither transfer people from the wireless department nor borrow from the QQ department.Because after the organizational reform in 2005, all departments have to fight for KPI, and each department is strictly guarded.Zhang Xiaolong's only solution was to recruit people from the mailbox department within his own authority. The first batch included only 13 people including Zhang Xiaolong. These people were divided into 3 groups and developed on the three mobile phone systems of iPhone, Android and Symbian.The goal set by Zhang Xiaolong is to make it in 2 months.

"Manager" traced Zhang Xiaolong's words on Weibo during this period of research and development: "My only expectation for iPhone5 is that, like the iPad (3G), it does not support phone functions. In this way, I have less phone bills. , but you can use Kik to text me, use Google voice to call me, and use Facetime to video with me.” The time was November 2010, 11.Obviously, before the advent of WeChat, Zhang Xiaolong had a basic definition of the prototype of the product: it can send text messages, call, and video, and all of them are free.

Everything seems to be going in the right direction.Zhang Xiaolong thought that WeChat 2, launched in January 2011 after he led the team for two months, would soon be favored by users, but what he did not expect was that the market response was relatively cold.At the same time, competing mobile IM products such as Michat, Godchat, Message, Youyou, etc. have already stood in the queue.

After research, Zhang Xiaolong found that both WeChat 1.0 and its opponents are simple copies of Kik with the selling point of saving SMS fees, and there is no difference between them.In order to achieve differentiation from similar competing products, Zhang Xiaolong not only added picture sharing, but also added some application plug-ins in the subsequent WeChat versions 1.1 and 1.2, such as intercommunication with Weibo private messages, adding friend notes and supporting address books search etc.However, the market reaction remains poor.

Zhang Xiaolong asked himself: "Why is there no explosive growth in users after launching so many useful plug-ins?" Zhang Xiaolong organized a big discussion internally. Since the 13 people were all from the mailbox system, the topic quickly led to their past Successful experience in mailbox products.In the end, a core point was discussed: Among the many optional application software, the first choice of customers is often more concise "fool software", rather than products that are complicated and difficult to understand.

"When making a product, less is more. We hope that the product is simple. After making some essential things, the rest depends on the user's imagination. Removing certain functions will give users more room for imagination." After the first three rounds of trial and error After that, Zhang Xiaolong relaunched version 2011 of WeChat in April 4.In this version, all functional plug-ins are moved into the "Settings" column, and only the most concise message bar is kept on the interface.Unexpectedly, after the launch of version 1.3, the number of registered WeChat users that month reached the 1.3 million mark in an instant.Subsequently, Zhang Xiaolong pursued the victory and released three versions in succession. After the support for video information and version 500 of the "view nearby people" function, the number of WeChat users has reached 3 million.

However, what really detonated WeChat was the 3.0 version released on the National Day of that year. This version added the "shake" and "drift bottle" functions, breaking the social and communication barriers that stayed between acquaintances in the past, and connecting people to each other. The communication leads to a wider strange world.In other words, WeChat is no longer a simple instant IM, but a mobile product for all social applications.

For the "shake" function that sounds like a loaded bullet, "Manager" consulted Liu Sishan, Tencent's public relations manager.Liu Sishan made it clear that this technology was exclusively developed by Zhang Xiaolong.It is said that this innovation originated from Zhang Xiaolong’s inspiration while driving: Zhang Xiaolong suddenly heard a beautiful song after turning on the car radio while driving, but he didn’t know what it was.So, Zhang Xiaolong had a whim, if he could "shake" this song with his mobile phone, record or even download this song.

从微信3.0版本之后，所有意图在移动IM分羹的对手，只能眼看微信独骑远去。从2012年3月达到1亿用户之后，微信开始了几何式的规模倍增：用了6个月达到2亿，再用3个月达到3亿。奇虎360董事长周鸿祎不得不这样表示：“50个360的产品加起来都比不过一个微信，腾讯已经拿到了移动互联的‘船票’。”

The mystery of the source of 3 million users
Although WeChat has been seamlessly integrated with the user experience through trial and error in the hands of Zhang Xiaolong, it can achieve 3 million users at a god-like speed, which has a great relationship with QQ resources.

"The relationship between WeChat and QQ is very close. The initial relationship between WeChat and QQ was introduced. At present, the vast majority of users still use QQ ID and password to log in to WeChat." According to Ma Huateng's statement, WeChat is standing on the shoulders of QQ to win users. , A simple method is that all QQ users first know WeChat, and then bind their QQ information with WeChat when they open WeChat.Based on QQ’s 7 million users, at least one-third of QQ users are directly imported into WeChat.

But most people ignore another source of WeChat users—Weibo.Does the Weibo mentioned here refer to Tencent’s own Weibo caliber?No, on the contrary, Tencent's rival: Sina Weibo.

Most of the 1 million yuan Zhang Xiaolong received was used for WeChat research and development, and none of the money was invested in external publicity.In this regard, "Manager" confirmed it in communication with an employee of Tencent. She told "Manager": "WeChat has never advertised outside, and it has been accumulated entirely by word of mouth." But "Manager" found that She only tells half of the truth, that at least some of WeChat's 3 million users come from Sina Weibo.In this regard, "Manager" conducted an empirical investigation:
(End of this chapter)