Chapter 50 Ma Huateng laughs proudly at the gate of the rivers and lakes and comes from behind

When Ma Huateng started the portal, the pattern of the three major portals had stabilized.But Tencent's portal has been at the forefront since its birth, no less than the three major portals. In the summer of 2004, the information content from qq.com gradually increased on the QQ client. For example, during the Olympic Games, China’s Olympic gold medals will be announced in the form of flash advertisements. Relevant news tips will also pop up in the first time.The random pop-up "Tencent Mini Homepage" organizes the important content in the mass information for users to choose freely, and directly clicks to enter the interface of Tencent.com. The floating news of QQ conveys the news events happening all over the world to the users in the first time.

These unprecedented portal innovations, relying on Tencent's huge user base, have surprisingly outstanding effects. According to Tencent's statistics on the mini homepage that pops up from the QQ client, it can boost traffic by 50%-100%.Although NetEase and Sina have launched their own client software in an attempt to compete with Tencent, for Tencent, these are not enough to shake Tencent's dominance in China's instant messaging market.Tencent's main task in the second half of 2004 is to combine the influence of the website and QQ itself to achieve explosive growth.From the perspective of the industry, Ma Huateng is walking faster and faster on the road to the door.

On October 18, 2004, a new version of qq.com News was launched, and it was clearly positioned as a "news portal for youth".In this large-scale revision, in addition to enhancing the traditional advantages of online news such as richness and immediacy of information, it also launched columns such as "Legal System", "Military Affairs", and "Comments", and paid special attention to contemporary youth. Starting from news perspectives and concepts, it analyzes and interprets major events that occur in daily life. Tencent's move is seen by the industry as a manifestation of online news's gradual transformation from large and comprehensive to market segmentation, and it is also the starting point for Tencent to try to share the online advertising feast with established portals such as Sina and Sohu.At this time, Tencent changed its low profile a year ago.Sun Zhonghuai believes that it is not impossible for Tencent to overtake third-ranked NetEase as soon as possible after the revision.One year after it was quietly launched, Ma Huateng officially announced that he would position his portal as the "No. 1 portal for fashion and entertainment in China", and threatened to raise the overall ranking from the current fourth in the country to the top three in the next year.

Everything seems to be just as Ma Huateng expected. In two years, Tencent has grown from small to large. When the time enters 2005, Ma Huateng wants to achieve another goal, from big to good. For Ma Huateng's opponents, 2005 also seemed quite different.The dominance of the three major portal websites in the past was threatened. The industry described the confusion encountered by the portal websites in that year-"Sina was eroded, Sohu was confused, and Netease was transforming." Sina, the first of the three portal websites, The days in 2005 were very difficult. First, on February 20, Shanda announced the acquisition of 19.5% of Sina’s shares and became the largest shareholder of Sina. Subsequently, the first quarter financial report showed that Sina’s net profit fell by 36% compared with the same period last year. Significant decline.

"Internet Weekly" described Sohu's predicament in 2005 as follows: Perhaps because of suspicion, Sohu has been a little hesitant in the past two years. Down.Zhang Chaoyang claimed that "Sohu will strive not to make mistakes, and only wait for others to make mistakes."But blindly afraid of making mistakes, seeking stability and fearing chaos, will often miss business opportunities.Despite this, the strong positions of Sina and Sohu in online media have kept their ad revenues at a steady rate of increase and driven the overall performance forward.The data shows: Sina's advertising revenue in the third quarter was 23 million US dollars, an increase of 24% over the same period in 2004, and drove the overall revenue to increase by 8% over the previous quarter; Sohu's advertising revenue in the third quarter was 18.8 million US dollars, an increase over the same period last year 21%, and led to a 9% increase in overall revenue quarter-on-quarter.

Netease, which is inferior to Sina and Sohu, has been relatively stable in Nasdaq, and its stock price is also the highest among the three major portals.Ding Lei puts his attention on the game, whose income has already accounted for half of the total income, which seems to cover the scenery of Netease e-mail to some extent.Statistics show that in the third quarter, NetEase's online game revenue reached US$46.1 million, accounting for 81% of the total revenue, while its online advertising revenue was US$9.1 million. Compared with Sina and Sohu, the gap is very obvious.And the wireless business was regarded as tasteless by Ding Lei and gradually marginalized. "IT Times Weekly" wrote: From the perspective of the business situation, the portal model created by Sina is also facing weak growth. The total amount of online advertising in China is equivalent to two provincial TV stations, and more portal revenue depends on SMS. Telecom support such as value-added.

Yang Weiqing, founder of iresearch, which specializes in Internet analysis, said frankly: "All portals are aware of their own business prospects, but the huge corporate structure and the need for public listing information disclosure make it difficult for portals to turn around." In fact, Zhang Chaoyang Sohu has a huge number of registered users through its frequent acquisitions. Ding Lei’s NetEase is more dependent on online games, and TOM’s good relationship with telecom operators has boosted Wang Leilei’s reputation. Even quasi-portals like 21CN and 263 relying on e-mail quietly changing.On the contrary, Sina, a website defined as the flagship of the portal concept, is still emphasizing the long march of news portals.

"Sina and similar traditional portals have entered a dead end," said Fang Xingdong, who once focused on the commercialization of blogs. Tom follows Tencent and ranks among the top 5 portal websites. 92% of Tom's income comes from one business - wireless value-added services. In 2004, Tom's SMS business increased by about 50%. Although foreign Internet companies have not achieved success in China so far, the MSN Chinese portal still caused a panic when it landed in China. After all, behind MSN China is Bill Gates, the founder of the Microsoft empire. Experts pointed out that behind the development of Microsoft's portal website, there are many years of accumulated technical strength. For example, it can embed its own website or the service content provided by the website into Microsoft's application software, such as Office, Hotmail, IE browser, MSN instant messaging, etc. .Compared with other portals in China, MSN portal will have the most powerful terminal channels and the largest number of computer users, which will bring a completely revolutionary force, which will pose a huge threat to Chinese portals.For this action, Microsoft's official caliber is quite high-profile: "Fulfill its commitment to the Chinese market and support the development of China's software and information industries." However, after receiving expensive cooperation fees from nine partners, MSN China It was submerged in the ocean of China's gateway, and so far there are no amazing works.

As we all know, Sina, the leader of the portal, has gradually gained influence in the news field through several news campaigns. In 2003, the report of the Shenzhou 5 launch not only brought hundreds of millions of visits to Sina, but also brought it huge economic income.In the Shenzhou VI report in 2005, Sina.com highlighted special reports, exclusive pictures and texts, telephone interviews with Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng’s family immediately after the launch of Shenzhou VI, and exclusive cooperation with CCTV... Content innovation , The development and establishment of monopoly media resources are now regarded as the magic weapon for winning by Sina.

How to break Sina.com's first-mover advantage, Tencent.com jumped out of the circle of pursuing traffic, and blazed a new path in news interaction.Through the close integration with the QQ client, the mini homepage that pops up when you log in to QQ, and the instant message that pops up on QQ when there are key events, enable Tencent.com to send the latest news about Shenzhou VI to netizens in the first time. Therefore, in the news commentary In terms of numbers, Tencent far exceeds NetEase and Sohu, and the popularity of Tencent.com and its natural advantages in interactivity are undoubtedly highlighted.

As of 12 o'clock on October 18, 2005, the statistics of netizens' feedback showed that: the number of comments posted by netizens on portal websites about the launch of "Shenzhen VI" was still number one on Sina.com with 109,610; Tencent, the score is 101587; Netease ranked third with 34124 over Sohu, the traditional second Sohu, only got 29736 comments and was squeezed out of the top three. In the World Cup, compared with Sina's traditional advantages, Sohu's exclusive video content and Tencent's unique reports impressed netizens even more. In the 2006 World Cup, the ratio between the portals seemed to have some ebb and flow.During the World Cup, many international brands invested generously in advertising, making Sina, Sohu, Tencent and other portals reap a lot of money.Among them, Sina's revenue reached $8 million, Sohu's revenue was $2 million (with some revenue included in the next quarter), and Tencent said that their advertising revenue was also close to $3 million.Tencent is also launching a new round of "Penguin Slam Dunk" action.Soon, Tencent.com announced a strategic partnership with the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) to win the 2006 World Men's Basketball Championship held in Japan and the 2006 Stankovic Intercontinental Cup Men's Basketball Champions Cup held in China. It is the sole organizer of its official website, and has priority in obtaining event authorization. From the Shanghai Auto Show, the launch of Shenzhou 6, and then to the World Cup, Tencent has embarked on the fast track of development not long after its birth. In the process, it has also been recognized by the industry.The reason why the traffic of Tencent.com can approach the three major portals in a short period of time is mainly due to two aspects: users who directly click on Tencent.com and IM users.