Chapter 34 Passive make-up lessons Ding Lei afternoon

Ding Lei, the head of NetEase, wearing black-rimmed glasses, a striped shirt over a T-shirt, slacks, and a backpack. This is Ding Lei's typical attire.He is also the founder of China's Internet myth. Through NetEase, he has created many firsts in the industry: the first Chinese full-text search; the first large-capacity free personal homepage base; the first domestic successful operation is also independently developed Domestic online games.Ding Lei's road to wealth creation began in 1997. He founded NetEase in Guangzhou. The intention of his name is to hope that the Internet will be very easy.Ding Lei is a programmer, so he attaches great importance to technology. At the end of 1998, in one year, NetEase made 5 million with 8 people. In September 1998, Netease changed its homepage to a web portal and enabled the domain name netease.com (later changed to 163.com).Without the intervention of any venture capital, NetEase invested all the money it earned in software development into portal construction. In April 1999, Ding Lei transferred the headquarters of NetEase to Beijing. Before Ding Lei came, the only Internet company in Beijing that could be reported was Sohu. On June 30, 2000, Ding Lei got his wish and NetEase landed on NASDAQ.

When NetEase landed on Nasdaq, the entire Nasdaq's Internet stocks had already begun to decline. NetEase fell below the issue price on the first day of listing. In the next nine months, the stock price fell continuously.The hardest day for Ding Lei was September 4, 2001.On this day, NetEase was suspected of financial fraud by misreporting its 2000 income and violating the U.S. securities laws. The Nasdaq stock market announced that it would suspend trading from now on.Ding Lei was only 30 years old at the time, and he was not intimidated by the unimaginable pressure.Facing the pressure of survival, Ding Lei decisively decided to start from two aspects, one is to reduce operating costs, and the other is to jump out of traditional content and take the lead in investing in SMS business and online game business. The decisive role saved Netease.

An important factor that allowed NetEase to wander between hell and heaven in just a few months was that the SMS business saved NetEase. In the second quarter of 2002, the SMS revenue exceeded 15 million yuan and the quarterly profit was 38,000 yuan.At that time, the "Asian Wall Street Journal" commented that NetEase became China's first profitable portal website, which was also an important milestone in China's Internet history.That year, NetEase became the best-performing stock on Nasdaq. In 2003, Netease stock continued to maintain its leading position among Chinese concept stocks. On October 10, 2003, NetEase's stock price rose to a historical high of $70.27, a 617% increase from the stock price at the beginning of the year, and a 108-fold increase from the historical low on September 1, 2001.

Ding Lei became the first domestic entrepreneur who became rich by doing the Internet, and Ding Lei became the richest man. For the first time, the wealth figures of China's richest people can be clearly and accurately measured. "Life is a process of accumulation. There will always be times when you fall. Even if you fall, you must know how to hold a handful of sand in your hands." When his personal wealth expanded rapidly, Ding Lei has always maintained a low-key and peaceful personality.Ding Lei once told the media that the richest man on the Internet is just a by-product of his entrepreneurial process.In his opinion, only by experiencing life personally can he touch the happiness of ordinary people and make his creativity more authentic to life.Ding Lei, who likes Jin Yong, once said frankly that he likes Jin Yong's novels the most, and among many characters, he likes Duan Yu and Wang Yuyan the most.

During the days when Ding Lei was out of bad luck, Ma Huateng entered the Forbes "China Rich List" for the first time, ranking 99th. Perhaps because of Ma Huateng's wealth, the entire Internet industry began to pay attention to instant messaging. The first shot was Ding Lei.For Ding Lei, instant messaging software is nothing new. In June 1997, Ding Lei discovered that a domestic company was making instant messaging software. "At that time, we didn't realize the changes that such a thing would bring, because it was too novel." In 2003, Ding Lei's IM tool NetEase Bubble was released, and Ding Lei's coveting of instant messaging seemed very understandable.According to the survey conducted by the Academy of Social Sciences that year: According to Alexa data, among the three major portals, NetEase’s direct traffic caused by e-mail services accounts for about 32%, while Sina and Sohu only account for 8% and 9%.On the contrary, the direct traffic of news channels such as news, finance, sports, entertainment, and economics is less than 15% in Netease, while that of Sina is about 38%, and that of Sohu is about 34%.Therefore, some analysts pointed out: Compared with Sina and Sohu, Netease's portal traffic is largely driven by e-mail, while the former two are mostly driven by news content.People in the industry pointed out: Bubbles' competition for the instant messaging market is only a part of portal competition and functional evolution.

Netease Paobao is much more perfect than QQ in technology, and it seems to have far surpassed QQ.Ding Lei defines an instant messaging tool as a multimedia communication software, which can transmit 3,000 characters and 1,000 megabytes of files, and can reach the video quality of MPEG4 and the voice quality of GSM.Ma Huateng, CEO of Tencent, responded to the emergence of Netease Bubble: the breakthrough of a single technical indicator will be at the expense of other indicators, and QQ emphasizes the overall experience. Ding Lei has adopted many strategies to promote his "Netease Bubble". Users can get a gold coin as long as they use "Netease Bubble" to chat online for 8 seconds. Expand to 1G capacity.At the same time, Bubble users can also get gold coins by adding Bubble friends. The more friends you have, the more gold coins you get.Ding Lei’s other trump card in promoting Netease Pao Pao is: Pao Pao will insist on sending mobile phone text messages for free. One is to raise the threshold of the industry to scare off new entrants, and the other is to attract price-sensitive users in the QQ Group.Under such a strategy, the popularity of "Netease Bubble" suddenly exploded, and it has the potential to catch up with QQ. In June 2003, the registered users of NetEase Paobao reached 5 million, and it was refreshed to 12 million two months later, and the number continued to grow by hundreds of thousands every day! According to the "2003 China Instant Messaging Research Report" by iResearch According to a survey conducted by Chinese users, QQ is the most frequently used instant messaging software among Chinese users, with a proportion of 74.3%, followed by Microsoft's MSN accounting for 11.23%, Netease Paobao accounting for 4.0%, and the proportion of other instant messaging software being selected is very low .

When Ding Lei released the 2004 update of Netease Bubble, he said: "Netease has 170 million email and community users, and these registered users can directly use Netease Bubble without having to register again. In this way, compared with MSN and QQ, , we have inherent advantages.” In 2004, according to iResearch data, Tencent QQ had a 71% share of the instant messaging market, MSN and Paobao had 17% and 6% respectively. But the good times didn’t last long. In 2004, Ding Lei’s NetEase company was punished for SMS violations. Coupled with the regulator’s increased supervision of SMS service operators and the implementation of new charging policies, NetEase’s SMS revenue in 2004 fell sharply. Quarterly SMS revenue was down 58% compared to the first quarter.Later, Ding Lei seized the opportunity of the rise of online entertainment. In 2005, 81.4% of NetEase's nearly 1.7 billion annual revenue came from online games (89.4% gross profit margin).In recent years, NetEase has transformed into an online game company on an equal footing with Shanda, each occupying 30% of the market share. The 2008 financial report shows that among similar Internet companies, NetEase is more like a game company, second only to Giant Network, higher than Tencent, Sina, Sohu and other portal websites, and also higher than Shanda, Perfect World, Ninetowns and other game companies.

Compared with games, NetEase's instant messaging tool, Bubbles, is a business that is red with cherries and green with plantains.