Chapter 8 On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog - Xue Fang

When the Internet was just emerging, there was a famous cartoon in the "New Yorker" magazine, which roughly meant: "On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog."In the cyberspace characterized by screen names and avatars, dwarfs appear as heroes, ugliness becomes handsome, the weak burst out with strength, the yellow-haired and curly-haired are gentle and elegant, and the gray-haired and chicken-skinned are youthful and youthful... and the other side of the Internet At one end, sitting in front of a computer might be a dog. In China, the virtuality and absurdity of this kind of communication is carried by an instant messaging tool called QQ. In September 2000, I was walking on an extremely dilapidated small road in the northeast corner of Hefei City, and I heard someone chatting, roughly meaning, "Don't you go online, chat on QQ, make friends with netizens, and have a relationship?" Looking back , I saw a few middle-aged men dressed very homely.

In 2001, when the freshman winter vacation was over, it became very difficult to register a QQ number. The information displayed on the page for applying for a QQ number was applying for a server link. After waiting for a while, four messages appeared on the page. Word - application failed.My classmates and I attributed the failure of registration to the slow speed of the Internet cafe, too many people applying for numbers, and network congestion.So, apply over and over again, fail over and over again, and repeat.Suddenly one day, I got news that the mobile phone application for QQ number was approved very quickly.But on the university campus in 2001, mobile phones were a luxury, and only a few students had mobile phones.Therefore, many people ask people with mobile phones to help them apply for a number, which has become a common thing on campus or in dormitories.Going online to chat on QQ regularly has become a living habit, and my QQ number is definitely a number that can be blurted out.

At the end of 2002, a classmate told me that there is a very good instant messaging software called UC.I tried to download and run it, and found that the page settings of UC are more fashionable than QQ.I vaguely remember that the colors on the window are very beautiful, and the leaves on the interface are falling one by one, which is very beautiful.But my high school classmates and some familiar strangers are all on QQ, so I only used UC a few times, and then I gradually forgot the number. At the end of 2003, on a whim, I decided to apply for the postgraduate entrance examination of modern literature at Xiamen University. I found a senior sister who was a graduate student at Xiamen University at the time. The senior sister was very enthusiastic and sent me a long text message. I was very touched at the time.At the end of the text message, the word "Bubble" appeared. It was only later that I realized that the text message sent to me by my senior sister was sent through the Internet. I thought the software "Bubble" was good, so I downloaded it to my computer, but it was rarely used.

In November 2004, I went to a newly established newspaper called China Wall Street Journal as an intern. When I first arrived, the department leader asked me to be responsible for collecting topics, notifying meetings and other trivial matters.On the first day, the leader handed me a list with the mobile phone numbers and MSN email addresses of everyone in the department printed on it.That was the first time I heard about MSN software. I registered an address with the full spelling of my name, like a QQ number, and added the MSNs of all my colleagues at that time.At that time, I used two instant messaging software, but vaguely felt that using MSN was for work, and QQ was for chatting.Later, I discovered on QQ that a classmate’s profile picture had changed into a small blue head, which was no longer fancy, and it was quite similar to MSN, and this classmate’s profile picture was always on during working hours.From this, I learned that this is a QQ for business use, so I also applied for a work version of QQ, but I rarely use it, because work-related people are still on MSN.

That's how I more or less relate myself to a multitude of instant messengers.Later, I grew up as a financial reporter, reading all kinds of company news, venture capital, listing, billionaires under 30 years old...all of these are related to the Internet. Looking back at the days I spent with instant messaging, some problems that I couldn't figure out before suddenly became clear. In February 2001, QQ began to restrict user registration and began to launch mobile phone registration. This decision was later considered to be a wrong decision, which caused Tencent, the leader in the instant messaging market, to lose part of its market share.

UC, NetEase Bubbles, Sina, which I have never used, and Sohu’s SoQ all invaded the field of instant messaging at that time, and took away some market share from Tencent. As for why they did it A very simple reason for instant messaging is probably that instant messaging at that time had already made money. As for why it made money, I will analyze it in detail in Chapter 6. The firestorm in the early days of QQ can be glimpsed in Hefei from 2000 to 2004.On the vast territory of the motherland, a secondary city and an instant messaging software set off a wave here.At that time, many people should be like me. They didn't know that Ma Huateng was the head of Tencent until Tencent went public.

MSN, on the other hand, is slanting its sword and targeting white-collar workers in the office. It will grow into Tencent's strongest rival in the future. In 2004, Microsoft had a 20% share of the instant messaging market.One day, Bill Gates of Microsoft suddenly wrote a letter to Ma Huateng. The main idea of ​​the letter is as follows, "QQ group is not a social network, thanks to QQ for popularizing Chinese children's understanding of IM (instant messaging), when they grow up , work, and money, slowly transferred to MSN, seamless switching." When a reporter from "First Financial Daily" asked Ma Huateng how he felt when he received this letter, he did not respond positively—" It's been a long time."However, the protracted war between Ma Huateng and Microsoft does not seem to be easy at all.He did not respond to many intruders in the instant messaging field.All he admits is that MSN is a formidable competitor.

As for Bill Gates' optimistic expectation of seamless switching, there seems to be no sign yet.Analysys International's "Quarterly Monitoring of China's Instant Messaging Market in the Second Quarter of 2008" report shows that Tencent QQ ranks first with a market share of 80.2%.Microsoft MSN slipped to the third place with a market share of 4.1%, and the second place was replaced by China Mobile Fetion. As the leader in China's instant messaging market, Ma Huateng played a game of chess with strong enemies outside and pursuers inside. Relying on the first-mover advantage, he won the first game steadily.Whether Ma Huateng is willing or not, almost all Internet companies have declared war on Tencent.

Ding Lei was the first to strike. In 2003, NetEase vigorously promoted Netease Bubble, an IM tool that has been developed for a long time.Not long after, Sina followed up the IM market through acquisitions and Sohu through independent research and development.Next, online game leader Shanda, e-commerce giant Alibaba, and veteran software provider Kingsoft all launched their own IM tools.After becoming the dominant company in China's instant messaging market, Ma Huateng seems to have started a history of constantly announcing his opponents to himself. In 2003, Tencent started to make portals, and later made casual games, and then entered large-scale online games, and met Chen Tianqiao of Shanda and Ding Lei of NetEase. In the middle of 2005, Tencent made another move in online auctions and online payments, catching up with Jack Ma.After that, it rushed into the search market and declared a new enemy for itself: Robin Li.

Ma Huateng became the maker of the "war" in the industry, and the provocative result was: Ma Huateng founded one of the three largest comprehensive portal websites in China, the second largest C2C website, and the largest online casual game website.During this period, he created a profit model for a non-profitable IM. Even the foreign giants of instant messaging software, such as Microsoft MSN, Yahoo, and AOL, have not found a profit model. In this sense, Ma Huateng created a miracle. Looking at the ten-year development history of Tencent, there are two core words throughout, "first-mover advantage" and "late-mover advantage". He had no choice but to return home in defeat; under the advantage of "late striker", Ma Huateng was invincible.

This book tries to show the difficult journey of the former "ugly duckling" becoming a "white swan" from the aspects of Tencent's birth, growth, self-defense and counterattack, and tries to show Tencent's development from the historical perspective of China's Internet in ten years. Development, with Tencent as the protagonist, revolves around Tencent's growth history and diversification history, fully demonstrating the unique survival situation of local Internet companies.