QQ is 20 years old - 20 years of Tencent
Time has proved the success of QQ in the past, and only by understanding QQ can one understand Tencent.
Reporter Cui Peng
Source · China Entrepreneur Magazine (ID:iceo-com-cn)
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On the afternoon of May 12, 2008, the person in charge of Tencent's QQ data reported on the internal RTX (Tencent Communication) that the number of QQ online users in the Sichuan area suddenly decreased a lot. Zhu Daxin, an employee of Tencent No. 39, recalled that afternoon to us, "At first we thought it was because the network was down or for other reasons, but later we found out that there was an earthquake."
That night, many QQ groups within Tencent were discussing the same topic: What can we do? Some people say to be a message wall for missing persons notices, and some say to find ways to contact the masses inside. In the early morning of the next day, the minutes of the meetings discussed by various departments were sorted out, and emails were sent to the management, "The boss didn't say anything, so hurry up and get it."
The Wenchuan earthquake was the first time Zhu Daxin realized, "So we can do something. QQ ran too fast before, and many people didn't realize what social influence Tencent has." Behind the hundreds of millions of QQ accounts, there are lively users. QQ has become a part of people's daily life. The greater the number of growth, the heavier the responsibility of Tencent.
This user growth is phenomenal. "If we use the time machine to tell me the later data of QQ, we will not dare to start a business." Zhang Zhidong, the main founder of Tencent, wrote the first "five-year plan" for QQ when he wrote the first business plan for Tencent. "The number of online users exceeded 10,000. In fact, this number reached 1 million within two years.
Zhang Zhidong told us, “There were rumors that we established a very good structure at that time, and we could support QQ with over 100 million online users without making any changes. .”
Sometimes QQ is more famous than Tencent itself. Xu Gangwu, Tencent No. 3 employee, told us, “Most people didn’t know Tencent before the company went public, but if you ask QQ, they all know.”
2019 is 20 years since QQ was launched. For a long time, QQ is equal to Tencent, and Tencent is QQ. QQ has played a key role in many decisive moments in determining the fate of Tencent.
We found a lot of early Tencent employees, some refused to be interviewed at first, but later changed their minds, and some had never been interviewed by the media before. These include the main founder of Tencent, several top ten employees of Tencent, Tencent's first backstage, the first school enrollment, the first designer, the first Ph.D. and so on. The current huge Tencent has never lacked this kind of "first".
But if QQ fails to survive, or if Tencent falls in the face of any difficulties, these firsts will have no meaning. 20 years ago, QQ was Tencent's entire net worth; 10 years ago, QQ was Tencent's core product. We want to know, what is QQ now? Even many Tencent people may not be able to explain this question clearly.
Tencent should gain a lot of experience and lessons from QQ. Before the 3Q war, Tencent experienced several years of constant victories. It relied on QQ to successfully enter many fields. While winning continuously, it covered up its problems, and the crisis finally broke out. In the two or three years before the 9.30 reform, Tencent’s stock price has been rising steadily, and the inside is also optimistic. Then it suddenly raised its head, only to realize that the situation has changed drastically and there are many dangers.
Tencent is 21 years old and has experienced many ups and downs. Why did it jump into the same pit twice? When the reporter asked Zhang Zhidong this question, he thought for a while and said to himself, "Yes, why?"
Hegel said that the only lesson that mankind learns from history is that no lesson can be learned from history.
On the day of the interview, Zhang Zhidong took us to his office, which is located on the 49th floor of Tencent Binhai Building. There are dedicated elevators, receptionists and security guards on this floor. In this 50,000-person company, starting from here means the top of Tencent, with great power and majesty.
But the Tencent employees who saw Zhang Zhidong along the way did not hide from the leader, but took the initiative to come up to say hello, "Tony is back", "Where is the boss going?" What appeared on their faces was not awe, but kindness and respect.
Many early employees felt that QQ is not just a product for Tencent, it is also a gene and a belief. When it is put there, everyone will feel at ease, and there is a kind of historical inheritance. , or even though Tony has retired, he is still by our side."
Even if it returns to the product level, in the Internet world that loves the new and hates the old, QQ has experienced difficulties many times and has been reborn. 20 years after its birth, it still has more than 700 million monthly active accounts. Even if you look at the world, no other product can do it.
Time has proved the success of QQ, it does not need to sing praises. But only by understanding QQ can one understand Tencent.
01
"Why does this person demand so much from the product?"
On the day when the first version of OICQ was released, at two o'clock in the middle of the night, Tencent No. 7 employee Wu Xiaoguang was packing the software, Xu Gangwu was debugging the background, and Ma Huateng was "working on that website" in front of the computer.
That was Ma Huateng's first website in Tencent, and the pages were made by himself. At that time, there was a popular saying in China called "A confidant abroad is like a neighbor at the end of the world". Ma Huateng put this sentence on the page, and then added a candle between the two sentences, trying to "illuminate" the fonts on both sides. "It's OK for ordinary people to put a candle, but it took more than half an hour for Pony." According to the distance, each word is adjusted to a different brightness.
Xu Gangwu smiled and said to the reporter, "At that time, I thought, why does this person have so many demands on the product."
From the small team of a few people in the OICQ era, Tencent has gone further and further on the road of hard-charging user experience. Tencent has long had a dedicated user experience department. Wu Xiaoguang recruited Tang Mu from Jinshan in 2003 to set up Tencent CDC (User Research and Experience Design Center), who single-handedly designed the classification of stars, moon and sun on the QQ interface.
For key products, Ma Huateng will discuss with the person in charge of the design and give comments on the design draft. qq.com (Tencent.com) has done an important revision. It took more than half a year to revise hundreds of drafts. Ma Huateng will pick one afternoon every month to discuss with Tang Mu, such as adjusting word spacing, setting block size and Font color, etc., go through them one by one.
If Ma Huateng hadn't participated and made the final decision, the resistance to this revision would be very high. Tang Mu said, "qq.com will definitely jump up with me, because every time there is an adjustment, some advertisements will disappear, and the advertising revenue is real money. If you say that you will reduce an advertisement, who are you?"
Later, Tang Mu left Tencent to go to Xiaomi to be in charge of the smart hardware business. When Xiaomi released the router, it made a viral spread in WeChat. Less than 20 minutes after Tang Mu reposted Moments, he received Zhang Zhidong’s WeChat, “Tony said that this kind of viral marketing may be harmful to Moments, and the Xiaomi router is a good product, so there is no need to use this method.” Another ten minutes later, Tang Mu was pulled into a WeChat internal work group, where they were discussing how to regulate viral transmission in Moments. In the end, an hour after the circle of friends was sent, WeChat blocked the link.
"Tencent makes products based on user experience as the highest judgment standard. Even if I am the person in charge of this (Xiaomi) marketing, when the banner of user experience is planted there, I have to recognize it." Tang Mu's ten-year work experience in Tencent Among them, when there is an internal dispute, as long as the word "user experience" is involved, "it's like suddenly moving out of the Bible or the Red Book. Many people look at it and it seems to be like this, so let's stop doing it."
Around 2005, many game companies wanted to advertise on Tencent. Zeng Liqing specifically emphasized to the marketing department that they should review and reject irregular game companies. Zhu Daxin told the reporter, "Sometimes the advertising department will ask first in fear, the boss, this company is newly established, can you let it vote."
There used to be a company selling medicines that had been advertising on Baidu, and the results were very good. Later, Baidu raised prices, and that company approached Tencent for additional investment. It wanted to ask for two banner advertisements a day on QQ, but was directly rejected by Zeng Liqing.
In the early years, Tencent's team culture was highly trustworthy, with civilian communication and relatively simple interpersonal relationships. No matter what problems the founders had, they could criticize each other against each other.
Zeng Liqing, as COO, usually supports increasing the company's revenue. Zhang Zhidong's attitude is very clear. If the fee affects the user experience, he will oppose it, but objection sometimes does not work. As CEO, Ma Huateng needs to balance the interests of the company and the user experience before making the final decision. But no matter how fierce the quarrels are during the meeting, the general office will finally give a unified statement to the outside world, and other people will abide by it.
Xu Gangwu told us, "Afterwards, Pony will still say internally that Tony insists on user value and opposes doing anything." It was summed up by Zhang Zhidong in his concept of "luminous product people", advocating that employees should not only focus on the value of users, but also focus on user value.
When it comes to user experience and company revenue, these founders often quarrel at the general office meeting. If there is no result, they can quarrel a second time. "Pony's personality is more willing to listen to different opinions, so that everyone has more interaction".
But there are also times when Ma Huateng is "willing to go his own way". In 2003, Ma Huateng wanted to make games. He is an enthusiast of the military flag of the four countries, and he feels that the product experience on the market is not good. "At that time, I was against it. The number of QQ users was crazy, and my colleagues had gone all out, and there was no time to make products that were already on the market."
After a round of quarreling, Zhang Zhidong failed to win against Ma Huateng. The two reached a compromise and decided to send three people to try. After the first version came out, Zhang Zhidong changed his mind after playing for a few minutes, "Pony is right, there is a lot of room for innovation between IM and battle games."
In recent years, Tencent has a tradition of awarding outstanding products at the end of the year, and the "Hall of Fame" is one of the highest awards. Once QQ internally joked that QQ should be supplemented with a hall of fame, because all businesses were number one in the industry before, but the company did not have this award at that time. After hearing this, Ma Huateng said proudly, even if (QQ) is the Hall of Fame, you have no chance. I should go up to receive the award.
02
"If I can't do it, I'm leaving"
After Futu went public in March 2019, founder Li Hua had a meal with his old colleagues from Tencent. During the meal, Ma Huateng asked him to share his listing experience. Li Hua told a story on the road show of Futu. Goldman Sachs is the lead underwriter of Futu, and the managing director of Goldman Sachs in charge of the Futu project is Li Hua's hometown in Hunan. Once he half-jokingly asked Li Hua on the road, "You are a graduate of Hunan University. What is it like to serve people who graduated from , Oxford and Harvard, have you ever wondered why we are here to serve you?"
Li Hua was at a loss for words for a moment, saying that he was probably lucky. A few days later, he asked Li Hua the same question again while chatting, and that time Li Hua said, "I see, you did receive the best business education in top schools like Oxford and Cambridge, but you forgot One thing, I have studied in the most powerful business school in the world for 8 years, its name is Tencent, and I have experienced complete practical training.”
"This is not chicken soup. Tencent's experience gave me a 'God's perspective' when I started my business." When the No. 18 employee of Tencent told the story to the reporter, his tone was a little trembling, "I have always been more passionate. people".
The 8 years in Tencent changed Li Hua's life. Later, when encountering problems in starting a business, he often thought, "How do Pony, Tony, and Martin think about decision-making." Futu has developed to this day, "in terms of scale, it is at most equivalent to Tencent's situation in 2003. Going forward, I can still find the answer from this experience."
Tencent's start-up team is not as educated as the Silicon Valley elites who returned to China at the same time, and there is no blessing of abundant funds, but QQ has won one battle after another and is running faster and faster.
Xu Gangwu’s reason is very technical: At that time, people from big companies such as Microsoft and Mobile would not do such things, or look down on such things, “Among those who can do these things, we are the most capable. Pony they make products, We do the back-end technology, Xiaoguang (Wu Xiaoguang) at the front-end, these people were all top-notch at the time.”
Even in the face of an international giant like Microsoft, QQ can win. At that time, Wu Xiaoguang directly led QQ. In an interview, he called MSN a good opponent. "We were a little worried at first." But he soon discovered that many things that MSN wants to do need to be decided by the headquarters, and the Microsoft China team moves very slowly, "It doesn't look at China at all. Don't worry anymore."
There was an email discussion forum inside Tencent. At that time, many employees were worried that MSN would enter China, and the result of IE strangling Netscape (Netscape) would happen to Tencent. Ma Huateng replied to the email and said that QQ is different from browsers. Its migration is not so easy, and it cannot be replaced at any time like a tool. This is also the first time that many Tencent employees have heard the terms "relationship chain" and "user stickiness".
However, in Wu Xiaoguang's view, compared to MSN, the confrontation between Qzone and 51 is more difficult, "after all, the opponent is a pure start-up company." In 2006, 51.com (referred to as 51) led by Pang Shengdong had a lot of negative reviews on Qzone.
Tencent's previous back-end technology accumulation is based on narrowband IM products, which are characterized by short messages and small data volumes, and are somewhat powerless in the face of SNS products in the image era. During the competition with 51, a large number of users reported that Qzone was very slow, so Tencent had no choice but to design a small game on the queuing interface to allow people waiting to log in to have something to do and reduce user loss.
Wu Xiaoguang told reporters that in order to improve the user experience, Tencent has spent a lot of energy on making photo albums, "Photo albums should be our decisive victory." Liang Zhu, the current vice president of Tencent and the person in charge of QQ, described the tense situation at that time: "Martin (Liu Chiping) stared at them (Space), and said that he would dismiss the class if he failed." At that time, several groups of people came to optimize the QQ space, but failed. When Tang Daosheng was ordered to come to QQ Zone, he cooperated with Yao Xing.
Both of them were under tremendous pressure, "Dowson (Tang Daosheng) told Yao Xing, if you can't do it, we can't do it this time, and I will leave."
After the 9.30 reform, Tang Daosheng became the president of CSIG (Cloud and Smart Industry Group), and Lu Shan, president of Tencent Technology Engineering Group (TEG), said internally that the cooperation between CSIG and TEG is to entrust their lives to each other, "It's really like this , if he (Tang Daosheng) didn’t trust Yao Xing at that time and didn’t settle this matter, the result would be really hard to deal with.”
"As an architect, you are already an expert. If you can't solve this problem, what can you prove?" An early employee of QQ told us that there were several employees in the architecture department who helped QQ with driver optimization, and gradually faded out of the company after failure. , "If you don't succeed, you will leave."
QQ has allowed Tencent to form a tradition of training talents and selecting leaders by fighting.
Zhang Zhidong said, "QQ is the team that has cultivated the most technical, business and management talents in the history of Tencent." Many people who served this product later became indispensable talents for Tencent. At the beginning, Wu Xiaoguang won many tough battles and was finally promoted to senior executive vice president. He later brought out many outstanding "generals", including Tang Daosheng. And Tang Daosheng, who was worried about leaving him, has also become the current member of the general office after years of trials.
Referring to that story, Zhang Zhidong told us, "Dowson (Tang Daosheng) joined Tencent in 2005, and we first wanted him to be Tencent's internal cloud. A tech guru turned into the president of CSIG."
Fighting tough battles can strengthen the team, and winners are more convincing. Tencent is willing to reuse people who can win battles. The current CVPs and general office executives are all people who have proven themselves with military exploits. Winners and losers reflect the cruelty of business competition. As a leader, when you fail, it is not a personal failure. The cost may be that the entire company misses good opportunities.
External competition allows large companies to maintain a sense of crisis and combat effectiveness. Wang Ying, an employee of Tencent No. 397, said that the period of the 3Q war was the most united moment within Tencent over the years. , "What resource you say you want, I will give it to you immediately."
Qzone was an important public opinion position for Tencent at that time, and was responsible for "communicating the facts and interpretation of the company's behavior."
The general office sent an email to Qzone, and after forwarding and processing by the people in charge at all levels in the middle, the business side was executed after only one hour. "At that time, Pony also replied to the email saying that QQ space is really powerful. The boss may think that the company has not been in vain for so many years. In a word, everyone has gone to work."
This is a typical wartime mobilization state, omitting red tape and intermediate processes, the whole is running at high speed like an individual, with only one purpose, which is to win. Although it cannot be routine, it can reflect the combat effectiveness of a company.
In that battle that could determine the fate of Tencent, the management locked itself in the company for three consecutive days, held meetings at any time, and made decisions at any time. Later, when Wang Ying met Ma Huateng on Tencent’s corporate anniversary day, she noticed that his face was fat. “I asked Pony if he was fat? He said no, he was swollen after not sleeping for a few days.”
03
"I'm afraid we have the mentality of the rich second generation"
In 2001, Tencent earned its first pot of gold by relying on the SP business, which was about 10 million yuan. "The boss has never made so much money, and he was so excited that he didn't know how to spend it." After getting rich, Tencent began to recruit engineers on a large scale.
Xu Lin, an employee of Tencent No. 214, had just joined the company at that time. "Pony often emphasized the concept of second entrepreneurship with employees." He said that QQ was Tencent's first entrepreneurship, and the next value-added business (QQ Show) was a second entrepreneurship." In fact, it is because we are afraid that we have the mentality of the second generation of the rich.” Now it seems a bit ridiculous, but the money was considered a “huge sum” for the young Tencent.
Neither Ma Huateng nor Zhang Zhidong could have imagined at first that Tencent, a precarious "small workshop", has reached a scale of more than 400 billion US dollars and more than 50,000 employees today.
Zhang Zhidong told us that the interviewees will feel the aura of the colleagues who joined in the early stage, "He is the kind of person, so we will choose him." The incentive for them is what users like, not rewards from managers. "If Pony pats him on the shoulder and presents him with an award, the blood can last for three months? But this kind of person can keep fighting for himself as long as he sees users like it. Some people are born to like such things. "
In the early years, the network environment in China was not stable, and the server often went down due to problems in the computer room or the fiber optic was cut. When something goes wrong, "I basically don't need to make a phone call, just go back to the company directly", because the relevant colleagues must have gone to the company to discuss the solution. Zhang Zhidong just needs to meet with everyone to see if there is room for improvement in the solution, how to issue an announcement, and how to fix it. OK.
At that time, it was normal for the team to stay up all night or stay up until three or four in the middle of the night, and there was no concept of overtime pay. Once there is a problem with QQ, everyone will get together immediately, no matter day or night, they will disband and rest after solving the product problem.
Xu Gangwu once made a statistical graph on the PC, drawing a point every minute to show how many people are online, multiplying 24 hours a day by 60 minutes to form a graph. Normally the curve of this graph is smooth with regular peaks and troughs. As long as there is an abnormal shape, "diving, falling", there must be a malfunction.
"Everyone looks at this picture many times every day. If they leave the company and cannot see this picture for a few hours, they will feel uncomfortable. They must find a computer to read it. If they find something abnormal, they will rush back to the company immediately." Zhang Zhidong told reporters.
During that time, the work was very hard. Many people went to the computer to see if the curve was oscillating when they had nothing to do.
This entrepreneurial mentality is an important reason why QQ stood out from competitors in the early years.
The first draft product design of OICQ was born on a small whiteboard. Zhang Zhidong picked up a pen and drew for a while, designed several protocols, and the team began to implement them. At that time, Ma Huateng had a lot of ideas, and he was a night owl. He often proposed many ideas to the team.
Zhang Zhidong responded very directly to Ma Huateng's demands, "When you come to me, throw away half (ideas) first." In the early days, bandwidth resources were not enough, and many demands could not be fulfilled at the same time. After Zhang Zhidong cut the demands, he discussed with two developers. The result is often that they agree first, and then throw away half when they do it, and finally only a quarter of the demand is left.
"They won't tell me, and I won't tell Pony, and Pony won't get angry, why throw everything away." In 1999, there were only a few people in Tencent. Everyone had lunch at noon every day, and they would touch each other if they had any problems.
Tencent released the first version of OICQ before the Spring Festival in 1999, and nearly 100 people were online after the Spring Festival. Several bosses said that everyone should quickly place more points and rush to 100. After the goal was completed, the team also specially ordered a takeaway and had pizza to celebrate.
In the beginning, Tencent was short of money. In order to support OICQ, many people in the company had to do some small-money projects, such as designing a webpage. The income of a project was about five or six thousand yuan. Ma Huateng and Xu Chenye made a lot of webpages. At the most difficult time, the treatment of employees was not affected. Several founders halved their salaries from 5,000 yuan to 2,500 yuan.
Zeng Liqing was born in marketing and is very good at inspiring everyone's emotions. "In the beginning, Jason was the one who painted the cake for us. In the future, I will guarantee you everything, how good your life will be, and these difficulties are nothing." Xu Gangwu said.
When Tencent was doing paging communication in the early days, Ma Huateng would talk to customers on PPT on stage many times, and technicians would write codes below. question.
Zhang Zhidong said that in the early years, Tencent's technical team was forced to improve, "If you don't make progress, you will die", users are growing at a high speed, the company's funds are limited, Tencent can't buy too many servers, and it must maximize the performance of the equipment. The company’s money will last for a while, and there will be enough time to find a business model before the flow of funds is cut off.” At that time, the technical team was racing against time.
How fast is QQ running? At that time, CTO Zhang Zhidong once predicted its user growth rate, which soon proved to be unreliable, "then he said another one, which soon proved to be unreliable again, (actual growth rate) exceeded his every time Target". Zhang Zhidong's initial prediction was that there would be 10,000 online users in five years, and Xu Gangwu wrote the background structure according to this expectation.
"It killed me later!" Xu Gangwu laughed when talking about this experience. The growth rate of QQ far exceeds everyone's imagination. In the early days, the number of users doubled every two months, and the number of simultaneous online users exceeded 1 million in just two years after its release.
What Tencent is facing is the unprecedented crazy growth rate in the history of the Internet. It should buy more and better servers, but Tencent has no money. "In the beginning, there was only one very broken machine." Xu Gangwu was forced to constantly modify the structure and optimize the program almost every week. This process of tinkering lasted for a long time.
Before the millennium, a well-known problem in the industry was how the Linux system could support 10,000 simultaneous connections. That is, at that time, Tencent had silently achieved that a poor machine could drive 100,000 online users.
When MSN entered China, "many people thought that Microsoft was rich and we would be doomed." Later, Tencent calculated the cost of the two parties' architecture. Microsoft needed a few dollars to maintain an online user, and a registered user cost about 1 dollar. The cost of QQ was similar to that The difference is two orders of magnitude, "The same experience can be achieved with only about 1% cost, I am not afraid of it at all."
04
"Boss, are you worrying too early?"
Many of the crises Tencent faced during its growth were directly or indirectly related to QQ.
When Tencent was founded, its main business was to sell paging systems to customers. In 2000, the price of mobile phones gradually dropped, young people began to abandon BB phones, and paging stations closed down one after another, including many customers of Tencent. Originally, Tencent's original intention of doing OICQ was to increase the call volume of the paging station, which was regarded as an additional service, but the number of users increased rapidly.
"The main business encountered a crisis, but fortunately the side business came out." That experience strengthened the crisis awareness of several founders. Zhang Zhidong told us that Ma Huateng has a sense of crisis in finding a sustainable business model.
When Tencent relied on SP to make profits, Ma Huateng emphasized to the value-added business department that the company's lifeblood cannot be taken away by SP, and must be its own payment channel. In 2003, Tencent began to switch channels and only accepted Q coins as payment for purchases. Wang Ying still remembers that the income of QQ Show dropped from 700,000 to 800,000 yuan a day at its peak to 100,000 yuan a day.
The big boss's sense of crisis impressed her deeply. Whether it is 51, MySpace or Renren, even if the gap between the second and third in the industry and Tencent is huge, Ma Huateng and Liu Chiping will be full of vigilance. "Sometimes we all feel, boss, are you worrying too early? We really don't think the other party is that scary."
In fact, bosses need to maintain a sense of crisis at all times. Zhang Zhidong used the example of Microsoft to compare Tencent's situation. At the beginning, Microsoft was under pressure to transform, "Office and Windows are very profitable. When your life is too good and your revenue growth is too easy, that is when you become dull."
Some early employees said that Zhang Zhidong is the most active person in the leadership of the general office to "speak bad" about QQ. He often beats the team, telling them not to rest on their achievements and do nothing, but to think more about whether there are new opportunities, because " I don’t think QQ can survive that long.”
Whether or not to do many new businesses has to be resolved by the general office. Wu Xiaoguang told us that generally the most important thing is the opinions of Ma Huateng, Zhang Zhidong and Zeng Liqing. "Many times it is Pony who decides to do it, and Tony objects. He is in charge of resources, and he is afraid that this thing does not have so many resources."
In the past 21 years of Tencent's development history, Ma Huateng often said that he was walking on thin ice. Even in moments of triumph, leaders need to respond to changing times.
Before and after Tencent's listing, a meeting of 30 to 40 people was held to discuss whether to continue to focus on the IM product of QQ. At that time, the mainstream was the portal model represented by Sina and Sohu, or the search business represented by Google and Baidu. Companies like Tencent with IM products as the main body had no reference objects.
Although QQ had many users, it did not make much money at the time, and there were disagreements among the five founders. Some people supported keeping QQ as the core, while others advocated investing heavily in new independent businesses. The result of the discussion is obvious. The former won. In 2005, Tencent implemented the first large-scale organizational reform. Ma Huateng proposed the "online life strategy", and Tencent began to diversify around QQ transformation.
QQ itself has also faced a transition dilemma. Many early employees believed that the most difficult period for QQ was the transition to mobile. At the beginning of 2013, QQ began to recruit a large number of iOS developers. At the same time, many people who worked on PC clients were ordered to switch to mobile. Wang Ying saw the difficult transition of many colleagues around her. At the end, it's painful, but the team has to cut half of the people around to do this."
Around 2011, the mobile QQ of the wireless department lost to Zhang Xiaolong’s Guangyan team in the WeChat horse race due to internal coordination issues brought about by the architecture. In 2012, when the structure was adjusted, Yin Yu took over the entire QQ team and continued to compete with WeChat. In the following two years, QQ and WeChat maintained a relatively parallel growth curve until the 2015 Spring Festival WeChat red envelope event.
Yin Yu didn't know that WeChat was going to do red envelope marketing a month before the Spring Festival Gala. "My heart sank and I said, the turning point has arrived." The Spring Festival Gala Red Envelopes helped WeChat hit the big guns in the second and third tier cities. "All the sinking users got through, and the network effect came out immediately, and the snowball got bigger and bigger." WeChat's user data curve rose sharply, DAU surpassed QQ and the gap was getting wider and wider.
"The crisis we are facing is a turning point," he mentioned that period of history in an interview with reporters with mixed emotions. "If the mobile QQ in 2010 had not been set aside, it could be done, but Tencent may lose the current WeChat. .”
We asked Yin Yu if Tencent would lose the external war if QQ won the internal war. His reply was simple and direct, "I won't lose, but it won't be as good as it is today. Even without WeChat, we can beat Xiaomi. Mobile QQ can still get that ticket, but it is an imperfect ticket. .”
WeChat gave Tencent an opportunity to redefine its social products. WeChat’s Moments, Official Accounts, and mobile payments later developed were all great innovations. Yin Yu said that if they were all implemented within QQ, they might encounter many problems.
For a long time, QQ has been burdened with a huge historical burden.
05
"Can you help us make a colorful black?"
Tencent’s early employees had a clear conceptual distinction: QQ is instant messaging, QQ Show is a value-added service, Qzone is a social product, and QQ Game is interactive entertainment. QQ in the narrow sense is just the first one, IM is the product department, and the others are business departments.
Wu Xiaoguang said, "Business departments all hope to put them on QQ, which can drive high traffic. The product department definitely hopes to have as few as possible." There is a protracted game relationship in the middle, and important businesses must be grasped by the top. What about daily needs?
For a while, there was a popular saying in Tencent, which was "you can bloom even if you insert a pole." No matter what kind of new business, as long as it is put on QQ to divert traffic, it will definitely be done. "The key is where to insert the pole?" QQ used to be Tencent's only traffic portal, and the icons on the interface were priceless, and each icon was arranged and designed by Tang Mu. "Many business lines came to public relations in turn, saying that our icon can Can’t be more conspicuous, can mine be placed in front of someone.”
Tencent has produced many colored diamonds for value-added services, such as red diamonds and green diamonds. "Later, the business discovered that color is a scarce resource. When there is a new business, there is no color to choose." A department racked their brains and asked Tang Mu if they could make a black diamond for them, but this black can reflect the feeling of colorfulness, Tang Mu laughed, "colorful black".
There is an example that shows the importance of QQ diversion from the side. In many teams of Tencent in the early years, the fastest-promoting employees were those who connected with the instant communication department (QQ). Business brings traffic and value."
When Xu Lin was in charge of the QQ show, she used to communicate with the QQ department for a long time because of the height difference of a few millimeters in the icons. Sitting in that position has to fight for it, "Of course, those who manage QQ also have the responsibility to defend user value."
A number of early employees said that when Tencent gathered the strength of the whole company to promote WeChat, it "pulled all the middle-level people in all departments to vigorously promote it, which has never happened before." When the QQ team helps to promote, every time they reply to an email to pull new data, they must send a copy to the Tencent General Office.
The biggest problem QQ faced during its growth period was that there were not enough servers, and the company did not have much money, so it could only reduce and control costs. After Tencent became rich, it handled many problems differently. During the period when the demand for WeChat and Moments servers soared, Liu Chiping stated internally that the company would not control investment and would support the development of WeChat.
Many early employees who grew up with QQ felt that the burden of QQ was too heavy after seeing WeChat. It shoulders the revenue pressure of the whole company, and sometimes has to sacrifice its own user value. Xu Lin said that it is "like a big brother who bears the burden of humiliation so that the family can go on. The younger brothers and sisters bring it up, and the elder brother is sick all over."
Some old employees said, "In the past, everything was brought by QQ. Give it an entrance, give it a star, and the business line embraces it every day. In fact, QQ has become a public sector. Although there is no revenue pressure, the burden is very heavy. Everyone It is said that as long as a business has an entrance on QQ, it will be stable.”
Even after WeChat started for a period of time, QQ still shouldered heavy responsibilities. "QQ is a sacred thing, and it is not so easy to (change) it casually. If QQ loses the basic disk, what will happen if WeChat fails to catch it." Yin Yu said .
In mid-2014, the number of monthly active accounts on WeChat had exceeded 400 million. However, when Yin Yu led QQ to propose a strategy for young people, many internal people still disagreed. QQ file transfer is very good, and the office scene cannot be lost.”
QQ is not only the cornerstone of Tencent's growth, but also the first "national application", and it also carries a huge historical burden. QQ has a good function update, and users will not praise it online, but "after some functions are adjusted or cancelled, we have hundreds of millions of users, many of whom have used it for more than ten years, and some people are not used to it, and then a bunch of people scold us on the forum" .
It wasn't until 2015, when the growth rate of WeChat users and QQ opened up a clear gap, that the burden on QQ was significantly reduced, and it was able to make more new attempts. After the reform on 9.30, when Liang Zhu first took over QQ, he ordered the team what basic IM functions WeChat has, draw a form and submit them all, and which QQ does not have or does not do well, "follow the teacher to learn".
From "big brother" to some functions using WeChat as a teacher, it is itself a manifestation of QQ's return to normal after unloading the burden. The day before the reporter interviewed Liang Zhu, QQ had just launched a version of the WeChat mini-program. Users could use it to view QQ messages in WeChat. If they wanted to reply to a message, they would jump to the QQ client. It is an attempt by Liang Zhu to find more possibilities for the future of QQ. Many WeChat users also have the need to check QQ news. .
Now many new functions launched by QQ are designed to form its own characteristics, so that when users choose between WeChat and QQ, they have one more reason to choose QQ. Liang Zhu said, "You know in your heart that it is difficult to subvert WeChat at this stage, but it will be difficult to say in at least three years."
The experience of QQ’s self-transformation can be used as a reference for many Internet products later.
Where is its future? "The most dangerous time for QQ has not yet come." Zhang Zhidong insisted that QQ needs to find differentiation. If it looks the same as WeChat, it will not have enough vitality. In this process, it has to deal with a lot of historical burdens, "a lot of family support, the patience of the company, whether the management team can let go, and don't be restricted by so many burdens."
The first client version of QQ came from Wu Xiaoguang, and his suggestions turned into a series of product requirements: better chat experience, faster program, no voice lag, more complex expressions, smoother multi-person chat, QQ groups are easier to use. "So many people, so many years, are still doing chatting. Unless IM has a major technological breakthrough or platform migration, it is better to do a good job of basic functions, and don't make things bad."
06
"They can find a more suitable path"
Many years ago, a group of blind people sent a representative to find QQ, saying that they forgot to add a "hotkey" in that revision. Blind people also often chat on QQ. Their operation method is to remember which button the focus will move to after typing a few times on the keyboard, and then press the Enter key to start the function. The QQ revision didn’t notice this, and adjusted the order of all the “hot keys”, and the entire QQ chat interface was completely changed. “For blind users, this is a disaster.”
Later, the Association for the Blind took Tang Mu to the home of a blind user to experience their way of using QQ. The blind man was sitting in front of the window, with a keyboard on the table and the host below. "He was typing against the window with super fast hands. , the association told me that he was chatting with the previous version, and after you upgraded, he didn't even have such a little fun."
"I was really wrong." That incident made Tang Mu feel a lot of awe towards QQ, and he had a new understanding of its user coverage. "So many users are using it. The QQ you make must have a sense of social responsibility."
Tencent emphasizes doing things according to their duties. Zhang Zhidong used chess as a metaphor, "There is a master in Go. The so-called master is this chess that is played in an upright manner. Don't always think about quick wins and bullying the opponent's chess strength. The corresponding master is called bullying. Or cheating, the opponent can’t see it, and you can quickly defeat him, this kind is not suitable for Tencent.”
In the early stage of Tencent's development, the income pressure was very high. For a while, the product experience of QQ was relatively poor, and many business-oriented compromises were made. For example, QQ has sold good accounts and done QQ business. For a while, users did not pay or even could not apply for QQ for free.
Zhang Zhidong called these attempts "the struggle of the small team when they couldn't find a business model". It was Tencent's pure desire to survive when there was no profit. "These are very dangerous paths." Fortunately, SP business and QQ show Appearing in time prevents Tencent from going further and further down the wrong road.
Along the way, QQ has done many excellent businesses, and also made reluctant or even "rude" attempts. For example, in order to combine QQ with search, a search button was placed on the interface bluntly, which seemed unnatural in that scene, just because Tencent wanted to do it, so it put something on it.
What is a good integration and what is a rough grafting is often judged based on business performance or revenue scale. Many detours in the history of QQ are related to this.
In the PC era, the cost of leaving users is relatively high, and the tolerance is strong. Whether it is QQ or several major portals, there are many impulses to abuse products. There are a lot of functions that are forced to be placed on it. After occupying a good position, the dividends are reaped. At that time, this kind of overdrawn user experience was common in the entire Chinese Internet industry.
Tencent has also been struggling with this inertia. Wu Xiaoguang said that Tencent's culture is relatively honest, and its core value is integrity, emphasizing facing problems head-on, rather than resisting and denying them. "We are both Pony and Tony, who can jump out to examine and reflect on their genes."
External competition can also speed up the process of correcting problems. Wu Xiaoguang would say that the battle between QQ and MSN was a good thing. In the past, in the face of commercial interests, QQ sometimes put user experience behind. "With competitors, we can meet the needs of business departments." QQ would say what MSN is doing well. If its user experience is poor, There is no way to fight the opponent.
"In the past, when the advertisements were all overwhelmed, you couldn't do anything. Now users say that MSN is clean and has a good reputation, and there is a game and balance inside." With external competition, the company's internal combat effectiveness will be stronger. Tencent experienced OICQ, MSN After many battles with 51 and so on, the team has made significant progress.
The benefits of winning battles are self-evident. Wu Xiaoguang feels that the team's self-confidence has increased significantly, "Because you have won many battles and your morale is relatively high, everyone will feel that we can always win." With the high morale after victory, any organization can always solve many problems without relying on processes and KPIs to drive the organization forward.
QQ does often win, and it seems that as long as it has it, Tencent can always win. But it is impossible to win without a price, which will invisibly let people relax their vigilance. The 3Q war is the most typical lesson. When Tencent enters all fields around QQ and achieves many successes, the self-confidence of the entire team will slide to the edge of self-confidence.
Wu Xiaoguang said, "The internal team is also very excited. They want to do everything by themselves, and they are unwilling to let the outside do it." Those internal problems that have been covered up because of continuous victories often erupt in a concentrated manner when the external environment changes suddenly.
Regarding the 3Q war, Ma Huateng later said a metaphor that Tencent is like an elephant growing up in a room. When it grows bigger, it will bump into the side when it moves. It is completely unaware that it is no longer a small animal. responsibility. This is a valuable lesson QQ brought to Tencent.
Many Tencent people believe that without that incident, Tencent may not change until it encounters another incident. When Tencent has developed to that stage, it is already difficult to change by ourselves. Everyone has different positions. When it comes to specific interests, it is almost impossible to rely on the internal "brakes".
For all changes, when the contradictions are irreconcilable and have to be resolved, it is easiest to convince everyone. The solution to the problem is likely to become a "troublemaker" in the future, and it must be solved in another way.
If the 3Q war made Tencent move from closed to open, then being too open may lead to a lack of progress. A dynamic organization cannot rely on dividends and needs to constantly innovate itself. Tencent’s two recent organizational structure adjustments are all like this.
After experiencing the influence of the QQ era, many people who left Tencent would bring Tencent’s good corporate culture and values to their own companies. Xu Lin said that without prior knowledge, “there are two things in the company values I set. point, it directly coincides with Tencent’s new values.”
Zhang Zhidong emphasized that facing problems frankly, facing colleagues and himself, the team atmosphere will be more pure. "In the early days, we not only focused on the business, the market, and whether the income was good, but also had more time to chat and eat with colleagues. He could talk to us about any confusion he encountered in his growth or life."
After he learned about Li Hua's entrepreneurship, he specially went to dinner with him, reminding him to pay attention to information and data security, and not to leak sensitive customer information because of security issues, "That may cause Futu to hang up directly." At that time, Li Hua was also the CTO of many things. Zhang Zhidong felt that it was not possible, and recommended the current Futu CTO to him.
When we found Zhang Zhidong and asked him to be interviewed, he said that he had left Tencent's management for many years and would no longer accept external interviews, and asked us to connect with the company. After the interview, we asked him why he still agreed to chat with us.
Zhang Zhidong replied, "QQ has been around for 20 years. It is not easy for a product to last for 20 years. It works hard like a big brother, helping younger siblings develop, making great contributions to Tencent as a whole, and bringing a lot of fun to Chinese users. .I want to say thanks to these old colleagues, and hope that in the next 10 years, they can find a more suitable path."
rain 