Chapter 72 Tencent's Winning Way: Fast fish eat slow fish under the first-mover advantage

At the birth stage of Tencent, several companies were already engaged in instant messaging, but only Tencent achieved an absolute victory. One year after the birth of QQ, it occupied the monopoly share of instant messaging in China.In the domestic instant messaging market, Tencent has maintained its No. 1 position for ten years, and the market share of its second brother is far from it.One of the important reasons is Tencent's first-mover advantage, and Metcalfe's law explains the reason in detail. Metcalfe's Law was proposed by Robert Metcalfe, the founder of 3Com and a pioneer of computer network. He believed that the value of the network is proportional to the square of the number of Internet users.Different from the audience of traditional media, Internet users not only consume information but also produce information.Each user is not an end, but a node.

The Metcalfe Law effect of the Internet is gradually brought into play. The inflection point when the Internet became a major medium occurred in 1997.There are two landmark events in this year. One is that the number of Internet browsing users has surpassed the production of traditional TV programs. A survey shows that Americans are more willing to go to YAHOO than to watch MTV.The second is that network-based digital communication has overwhelmed traditional communication. The digital basis is that in a sample survey, when asked about the most commonly used communication method, 36% of people answered E-mail, 26% were Telephone, e-mail beats telephony as a computationally interactive mode for the first time.

The value of the digital economy is equal to the square of the number of network nodes, which shows that the benefits generated and brought by the network will grow exponentially with the increase of network users.Therefore, the more computers connected to the network, the greater the value of each computer.According to Metcalfe's Law: New technologies will become valuable in the process of popularization, and when a technology has a certain user scale, its value will grow explosively.But how quickly can a technology have an effective user scale? This depends on the cost of users entering the network. The lower the cost, the faster the speed to reach the necessary user scale.

But in China, using the Internet to communicate has always been a free meal.People can browse website information for free, read high-end financial news, and send letters with free e-mail; information needed.Internet access is becoming cheaper, and broadband Internet access and monthly subscriptions are becoming more and more popular. In this free background, the number of registered users of Tencent has shown an explosive growth.In order to expand users, Tencent provides free client software downloads on the Internet and allows other software download sites to provide QQ client downloads.Not only that, Tencent also provides QQ software to various computer magazines, allowing them to be included in the attached CD.In this way, another group of users has been attracted.Of course all this is free.Various measures have played a significant role in expanding the scale of Tencent's network.

By the end of 1999, the number of registered users of OICQ had reached an unprecedented 1.3 million, with an average of more than 15,000 online users, occupying more than 80% of China's online instant messaging market at that time.By 2000, Tencent's OICQ had occupied more than 90% of China's online instant messaging market, basically securing the victory.The value of a network lies in the size of the network. If the network cannot break through the critical capacity, then the network is of little value.However, QQ software has monopolized the domestic market in just one year since it was launched, easily breaking through the critical capacity.

From the perspective of QQ's development history, QQ has more and more users, and its network value is increasing. However, many instant messaging software that appeared in the early days of QQ are now either dying or being acquired.In the Internet field, the story of big fish eating small fish in the past has been interpreted as fast fish eating slow fish.Those self-made, rich Internet billionaires, as well as the tens of thousands of small companies that emerge every year, seem to relentlessly explain the truth that the scene of big fish eating small fish has disappeared in this Internet age.In the field of the Internet, the factor of time has been greatly strengthened, and even become a trump card in determining the outcome.

Ma Huateng of Tencent is obviously deeply touched by the urgency of time. "In our industry, half a year is a big concept." This is what Ma Huateng mentioned when talking about their OICQ project.At that time, because there were already two domestic companies operating Chinese OICQ projects, and they were about half a year earlier than Tencent, which was enough to make them feel uneasy when they set foot in this field. "In the industry of instant messaging, there is no second child, only the boss." Ma Huateng said.