I have been listening to "Tencent Biography" repeatedly in the past few days. It is quite interesting. I will prepare a paper book to read it again.

Tencent is a company famous for its products and is worth studying.

The main points of this book are divided into four parts. Each part is simple to say, but it takes a lot of effort to implement:

1. Tencent’s " Internet Needs"

The definition of the Internet may be different for each company. Tencent adds demand. The following are the demand definitions of several important products:

1. QQ: Meets the need for communication

2. QQ Space: Meets the need for self-realization in the online world

3. Games and videos: meet cultural and entertainment needs

4. WeChat payment: meet offline consumption needs and achieve consumption upgrade

Two examples:

1 The relationship between technology and demand

Ma Huateng is Tencent’s “first product manager”. “As a product manager, the most important ability is to turn yourself into a fool, discover problems, and figure out why this is the case. ? Then become a developer instantly and solve the problem." In other words, you can become a novice in one second and a professional in the next.

In 1998, Tencent held its first technology seminar. Ma Huateng raised a question that sounded unrelated to technology: Where do our users access the Internet? Ma Huateng asked this question because Tencent's OICQ imitated AOL's ICQ software. At that time, personal computers were already very popular in the United States. Many people accessed the Internet at home and used ICQ software on their personal computers, so ICQ software stores the user's chat content and friend list on the computer client, which also helps protect the user's privacy. However, in China at that time, this model did not work.

At that time, most Internet users in China did not have their own computers, and they usually surfed the Internet in Internet cafes. If the chat content and friend list are stored on the computer client, when you use OICQ on another computer, you will not be able to find the original content and friend list. Therefore, OICQ puts the user information and friend list on the backend server. on, solving this user pain point. The success of Tencent's OICQ and some subsequent products is inseparable from the fact that the main founders, including Ma Huateng, attach great importance to user needs.

2. Establishment of business model

Later, with the development of Tencent, OICQ was renamed QQ. Although QQ users are growing rapidly, they have been unable to find a profit model. The rapidly increasing number of users has become a huge cost, consuming expensive servers, bandwidth and other resources. How was this problem solved later? Tencent established an "Avatar Team" to study user needs from the user's perspective and developed a product called "QQ Show", which officially charges for QQ avatars. In the QQ Show Mall, there are various virtual items such as clothing, glasses, and jewelry, with prices ranging from 50 cents to 1 yuan. In the six months since QQ Show was launched, 5 million people purchased the service, spending an average of about five yuan. QQ Show was the initial attempt at "virtual items", one of Tencent's main sources of income, which satisfied users to create an ideal version of themselves in the virtual world and realize their dreams and needs that could not be fulfilled in the real world.

2. The ultimate pursuit of perfect product experience

As a product manager, I am particularly concerned about and aware of this. Tencent’s understanding is as follows:

Products are the basis for the survival and development of enterprises:

1. Make products: rely on technology to meet user needs

2 . Sell the product: rely on the product to capture the deep-seated needs of users

3. Get the money back: rely on continuously improving the user experience

The development and role of product managers:

Speaking of products, in recent years many technology companies have a popular position called "product manager."

In the industry, Tencent’s product manager culture is very famous. Tencent's first product manager should be Xu Liang, who joined Tencent in 2002. When Xu Liang went to report, the position he originally applied for was already occupied. The HR department didn't have a clear idea of ??what position to give him, so they just said, "You should be a "product manager." Xu Liang asked, "What does a product manager do?" The person from the human resources department said, "It is to research products and wait for work to be assigned." It was such a "leisure" that gave Xu Liang the opportunity to study how Internet social products should make money. He found that many users wanted a good avatar and were willing to pay. This discovery led to Tencent’s QQ show, and it was also the initial model for many paid virtual products today.

Cross-functional team work efficiency

The position of product manager epitomizes the fact that technology companies face fierce competition, conduct in-depth research on user needs, and closely combine user needs with product performance. Business features that continuously improve user experience. Within Tencent, Ma Huateng has a title called "Email Madman". There is a well-known joke among Tencent people: One morning, the company president went to work and found an email sent by Ma Huateng at 4:30 in the morning. The president quickly replied to the email, the vice president responded to the email at 10:30, and several general managers at 12:00. After replying to the discussion results, by 3 pm, the technical solution was already in place. At 10 pm, the product manager issued a detailed development schedule, which took a total of 18 hours.

3. Continuous exploration to improve organizational efficiency

In reality, Internet company organizations do not necessarily have to be very flat and efficient. When a company grows in size, there will still be issues with management hierarchy and efficiency. Tencent is constantly making progress in development to adapt to the development of the organization.

The founder needs to be successful, the management team needs to be professional, the quality of front-line employees needs to be improved, and the organizational structure needs to be constantly adjusted. In accordance with the principle of organization following strategy, the organizational structure is adjusted, referred to as the business group structure of corporate ecological strategy, so that Tencent has both vitality and resource integration capabilities.

4. The ability to respond quickly to complex environments

The external environment of an enterprise includes at least three aspects: technological trends, capital resources, and competition and cooperation relationships

Tencent Development three stages: survivor, challenger to frontrunner.

Survivors: Tencent started in 1998, the golden age of Internet entrepreneurship in China. It stood out among many competitors and survived due to great chance;

Challengers : During the development process, we face various challenges, some of which come from foreign giants, some of which come from domestic peers, some of which come from changing policies, and some of which come from pressure from the media. Tencent took the initiative to carve out a piece of its own world.

Leader: After growing up, Tencent gradually lost its wildness and gradually showed the characteristics of an industry leader, using a more open attitude to create an Internet ecosystem dominated by itself.

Several development stages:

In Tencent’s development process, it has seized key opportunities for technology or business model innovation at least 4 times.

1. The first time was in 1999 when the Internet began to spread in China. OICQ was developed by seizing the technical opportunity of instant messaging on the Internet.

2. The second time was in 2003 when telecommunications value-added services, the main source of profit, were facing a crisis, and a business model of virtual props sales was developed.

3. The third time was in 2008. Seeing the trend of games transferring from PC to mobile phones, it entered the casual game market that is more suitable for mobile phones and replaced Shanda as the overlord of China's game industry.

4. The fourth time was in 2011. Taking advantage of the mobile Internet trend, we created WeChat for mobile phone users and obtained "a platform ticket for the mobile Internet."

End~