How did Tencent QQ rise? A novel helped Ma lay a huge "Tencent Empire"

As we all know, Tencent's rich products are Tencent QQ, Tencent's famous Internet social communication software.

So, how did Tencent QQ become a national product from a little-known niche software?

In fact, it turned out to be a novel that made Tencent QQ rise strongly and skyrocketed.

After the strong rise of Tencent QQ, Ma has laid a huge "Tencent Empire" step by step with its huge traffic advantage.

So, what kind of twists and turns does this story have? Don't worry, listen to me.

1998 10 Ma resigned from his old club "Runxun Company" and made an appointment with Zhang Zhidong, a college classmate. After some in-depth discussions, they are going to set up their own network service company.

So Ma went to his father, a state-owned enterprise executive, and asked them to give their new company a name.

Ma Chenshu, a senior executive of state-owned enterprises for many years, has rich experience, so it is natural to take a name. He not only promised to name the horse company, but also took four in one breath.

These four names are: Netcom, Jiexun, Feixun and Tencent.

In Ma's view, "Netcom" is the most ideal company name. It tells people bluntly that companies are closely related to the Internet, which is also the industry they love, are interested in and dream of entering.

"Jiexun" ranks second, because the word "Jiexun" means "quick and convenient", which fully embodies the advantages of the network through convenient and quick response and service.

"Feixun" represents the company's development vision and its own dream. Think about how desirable it is to fly freely between the boundless network sky and the endless life world.

And "Tencent" always seems to be not as ideal as the first three names. At that time, this name was not favored by Ma. He doesn't think the name is prominent enough and creative.

But when registering the company name, he found that the other three names had been registered by others. In the end, there was no choice but to choose the name Tencent.

So, in June1998165438+101,a company that finally changed the communication way of countless people in China-"Shenzhen Tencent Computer System Co., Ltd." was established.

As a newly established company, Ma hasn't decided what products and business to do, so he started his old job and developed a network paging system.

As mentioned earlier, Ma actually worked in a company called Runxun before he founded Tencent. At that time, Runxun Company was mainly engaged in the paging industry and was quite famous in the industry.

However, this product did not make them achieve much success. In order to make the company survive, Ma and his team actively expand various businesses. However, the business that usually makes money has little to do with the main business.

Their working environment was not very good at that time. Ma set up his company in a studio of tens of square meters on the 4th floor of Shenzhen SEG Science Park, where there are often only two people, Ma and Zhang Zhidong.

Their office equipment is extremely simple, and they can only eat lunch boxes and sleep on the sofa every day, but because of each other's dreams, they still forget to eat and sleep, and the office lights are on until dawn.

Ma once said that at the beginning of his business, he and several founders were most afraid of the end of the month, because during that time, although the enthusiastic people were exempted from rent, they still had to pay the utilities.

The servers in the computer room have to run 24 hours, especially in summer, when the hot months are longer in southern cities like Shenzhen, and high-power appliances such as air conditioners and water heaters are in full swing, water and electricity charges have become a problem that puzzles horses.

The bigger setback comes from the market. Not knowing the market operation, it is difficult for Ma to launch new products for sale. It is common for him and his companions to be turned away when selling products to enterprises.

Ma Hua Teng later recalled:

Soon after, China Telecom issued a bidding project to recruit powerful Internet companies and develop an Internet social communication software.

Ma was very excited after seeing this bidding project. He thinks this is a good opportunity for Tencent. Once Tencent wins the bid, their plight will be improved soon.

However, contrary to expectations, because Tencent was just established and its reputation was not obvious, China Telecom finally didn't choose them, so Ma missed this excellent opportunity.

After experiencing disappointment and depression, Ma learned from a bitter experience and pulled himself together. He finally made up his mind: China Telecom doesn't want us, let's do it ourselves!

Thus, Ma began the process of developing OICQ (later Tencent QQ) by imitating ICQ.

Although it is imitation, Ma still incorporates many innovative factors into ICQ. Ma believes that although ICQ itself has unique charm, it had certain limitations in China at that time.

First of all, its English interface is difficult to be accepted by the public in China; Secondly, the operation of ICQ also needs certain professional knowledge, and the users at that time were all professional network practitioners.

Therefore, it can't be popularized in China at all, and the domestic potential user base is so huge; Furthermore, ICQ itself has some shortcomings, that is, user information is stored in the user terminal.

In other words, if the user changes to a computer to surf the Internet, a large amount of information stored in it will be unusable. In China at that time, the main Internet users were concentrated in Internet cafes, so the defects of ICQ were fatal.

Therefore, in view of this situation, Ma and his partners officially launched an Internet social communication software-OICQ (later Tencent QQ) belonging to Chinese people in February 1999.

OICQ all uses Chinese interface, which is easy to operate and stores user information in the server, basically realizing the China of Internet social communication software.

But at that time, the software did not cause much social repercussions after its launch.

First, because the software market in China is still in its infancy, most people are still unfamiliar with the concept of the Internet; Second, the market is also flooded with a large number of software products of the same type, and OICQ launched by Ma has no core competitiveness.

However, Ma was full of confidence in his products, and he began to actively find ways to open the market. After some consideration, he decided to play a discount card.

1One day in May, 999, Ma suddenly hung OICQ online for customers to download and use for free.

Because the main income of internet companies at that time was selling software, and Ma's initial capital accumulation was also obtained by selling software, his behavior quickly aroused social repercussions.

The first group to use OICQ on a large scale were college students, whose economic ability was relatively low, and the preferential cards played by Ma quickly attracted them to the past.

Then, with students going to work, OICQ users began to spread rapidly to urban white-collar groups, and OICQ gradually opened up the situation.

However, at this time, although QICQ has gradually opened up the situation, it is only a minor celebrity and has not been widely spread.

What really makes QICQ rise strongly and spread all over the country is actually a novel.

The name of this novel is First Intimate Contact. It is this novel that makes millions of readers know the existence of OICQ.

The first intimate contact was an online romance novel written by a famous writer (rascal Cai) at 1998. Recognized as "the pioneering work of online novels", it is the first best-selling novel in China's internet history.

1In September, 1998, Taiwan Province Red Culture Publishing House published the paper version of "First Intimate Contact", and the book sales ranked first in the list, with nearly 600,000 copies sold.

1999165438+10. In October, Knowledge Publishing House seized the opportunity and was authorized to publish The First Intimate Contact in Chinese mainland. After publication, it quickly sold well in Chinese mainland, ranking in the best-seller list for 22 months in a row, and sold 1 10,000 copies in 2005.

In the novel The First Intimate Contact, the author Cai Zhiheng gave a gorgeous description of OICQ, making OICQ synonymous with fashion and popularity in people's minds. Many netizens began to expect this tool to sit down and chat thousands of miles away.

It can be said that The First Intimate Contact has greatly contributed to the popularity of OICQ. At the same time, OICQ was downloaded crazily, and Tencent became famous.

According to the relevant Internet statistics at that time:

At the end of 1999, OICQ had only about 60,000 registered users; By the end of 2000, OICQ had more than 654.38 million registered users.

By the end of 20001,the registered users of OICQ had soared to 20 million. The novel "The First Intimate Contact" was popular in China from 2000 to 2002.

Therefore, the novel "First Intimate Contact" contributed to the strong rise of Tencent QQ.

As we all know, Tencent's main business is social+games. With these two trump cards, Ma personally laid the vast expanse of Tencent Empire and earned a lot of money.

To some extent, the root cause of tencent games's rapid rise is that its social business has brought huge traffic support to tencent games.

The starting point of Tencent's socialization is its famous internet social communication software-Tencent QQ, also known as OCIQ.

Therefore, we can produce such a logical chain:

The first intimate contact created the strong rise of Tencent QQ, and the strong rise of Tencent QQ created the Tencent empire of Ma and vast expanse.

Therefore, from this perspective, it is the novel "The First Intimate Contact" that helped Ma establish his proud Tencent empire!

If the novel "First Intimate Contact" was not so popular, or the novel did not praise Tencent QQ so hard, the strong rise of Tencent QQ would certainly not be so easy.

However, the fact is so coincidental that "The First Intimate Contact" happened to be a hit, and this novel just praised Tencent QQ.

I don't know if all this is a coincidence or a marketing strategy that Ma has planned for a long time.

If it is a coincidence, it can only be said that it is caused by providence; And if Ma has already planned the marketing strategy, I can only say that Mark is really fierce, and his success is not unreasonable.

Dear friends, what do you think of this? Welcome everyone to express their opinions and comments enthusiastically.