Before WeChat, there was already a similar product on the market, which is China Mobile's Feixin.

At that time, the cost of sending SMS by mobile phone was high, so Feicredit's free SMS feature quickly occupied a large number of users.

At its peak, Fetion had 500 million users and 100 million monthly active users. However, China Mobile has resorted to a stupid trick in a good situation, refusing to use users of other service networks to use Fetion, which gives >

Relying on the advantages of being able to enable "three networks" users to achieve interoperability, WeChat quickly accumulated a certain number after it was launched. In addition, Tencent imported users to WeChat through QQ, and the number of users of WeChat quickly reached a considerable scale.

As a product with strong network externalities, this means that it has broken through the tipping point and laid the foundation for future expansion.

WeChat has created a record of mobile Internet growth, with 50 million mobile phone users in 10 months, and the number of users growing from zero to 100 million within 433 days......

That's >

In Wei Kun's memory, WeChat has countless competitors and challengers.

There are still people who can defeat > from the day WeChat was born, its identity was a challenger at the beginning, when a group of pioneers such as Mi Talk and Feixin were caught up by WeChat, and the challengers who followed wanted to challenge > one after another

What happened to those products that tried to challenge WeChat?

There is a communication app called 'Fei Chat', which came from the hands of China Mobile, in order to save Feixin, which was in decline under the impact of WeChat and Mi Chat, but in the end it ended in failure, and it can be said that there was not even a splash from the time it came out to the exit.

Among the WeChat challengers who are like carp crossing the river, NetEase's Yixin and Ali's dealings should be the most high-profile, among which Yixin also has the 'local tyrant godfather' of telecommunications behind it, and Ma Yun is even more personally involved in the battle to attract new people, and the giants are doing their best to try to > with themHowever, users don't need so much 'WeChat', just a simple pile of functions, lack of revolutionary innovation and easy trust, and in the end can only end up with no one cares.

It's easy to understand this: why use several "> when WeChat can do something

These "challengers" just didn't notice this, and most of them adopted a similar design to WeChat, with only some specific features enhanced. Therefore, their results can be imagined.

Therefore, WeChat in later generations is still the king of the social field, standing on the top of the towering peak, and sighing that 'there is no one who can fight'!

Now in 2012, in the face of WeChat, which has accumulated more than 100 million users, where is the entry point of sniping WeChat? How to steal users during the critical period of WeChat's rise? How can we grab enough users in the huge user market?

Obviously, some stimulus is needed to make potential users who haven't yet entered the pit without hesitation.

Previously, the attraction was nothing more than a few privileged incentives

For example, at the beginning, QQ used some privileges such as membership as a reward for recruiting new users, and Weibo also used the qualification of Weibo membership as a reward, but this method soon became inapplicable, because everyone found that a large part of the many privileges of the so-called members were impractical functions, so this most basic "lure" ended in failure.

Faced with this problem, Wei Kun also thought about it for a long time before he came up with two solutions.

One of them is a stupid method that was also used in the expansion of the 69wan game platform at the beginning, and that is to 'throw money'!

In fact, this method is also a way to imitate the user expansion method of news apps and short video apps that have emerged in an endless stream in later generations, that is, cash rewards.

Because no temptation can compare to the attractiveness of a cash prize.

For example, today's headlines, Alipay and other software in the future have an invitation code, and after inviting friends to use and filling in the invitation code, the inviter can get a fairly objective cash reward, and the invitee can also get certain benefits, which can be said to be quite attractive.

Didn't the WeChat competitors of later generations think of this solution?

In fact, they also thought about it, because theoretically, new social entry competitors can quickly accumulate an initial crowd through high subsidies, so as to strengthen the "network externality" of the product itself, and finally expand users through a snowballing process.

It's just that in the last life, the possibility of this process being realized was not great, and with the stable group and status of WeChat at that time, it was unimaginable to rely on "money" to forcibly squeeze out Tencent.

But that was six years later, WeChat's position in the social field was not yet stable, and although it already had more than 100 million users, this user group had not yet snowballed.

Don't look at 'throwing money' as a stupid solution, it still works well at this time.

Wei Kun has nothing else, he is not short of money!

From the operation of "Legend Hegemony" to the present, the profit brought to the company is about 320 million, plus the share of "Temple Run" from the telecom love play platform, the company's current funds available on the books are about 400 million.

It looks like a lot, but if Tencent really goes out to wrestle with him in person, Wei Kun's little money on hand will be a little insufficient.

But don't forget, he also has an AFK system, which is his biggest killer.

'How many have you saved so far?'

Wei Kun played the game alone while he was alone in the office.

Boarding the game, the female Taoist priest controlled by Wei Kun is still working tirelessly to release fireballs, and a piece of ingots will fall around the body of the monster that is defeated from time to time, and the female Taoist priest will automatically pick up all the ingots on the ground.

The number of ingots in the upper right corner jumped up again.

‘82865！’

The number of ingots in the early 120,000s, the above is the result of the game hanging up these days.

Wei Kun once calculated the efficiency of dropping ingots every day in the current game, and the ingots dropped by fighting mobs every day for 24 hours a day are about 3200 ingots, and if you defeat the boss with one turn, you can get 1000 ingots at a time.

This is the bulk of Wei Kun's current ingots.

It's just a pity that the reincarnation boss only spawns every six hours, which means that it is only four times a day.

Daily characters have ten chances to challenge the reincarnation boss, and when Wei Kun fails to raise the level of the female Taoist priest to 2 turns, the remaining six opportunities to challenge the reincarnation boss can only be wasted.

That is, 3200 + 4000 = 7200 ingots, which is Wei Kun's ingots income at the end of the day.

If converted into RMB, it is 7.2 million, 216 million yuan a month!

This is where Wei Kun's confidence lies in burning money!

To put it mildly, even if the result of the challenge to WeChat ended in failure, he had nothing to lose, and the system was his biggest reliance.

Outsiders may see him as a loser, but it's a pity that Wei Kun still lives better than 99.999% of the world's people.

………………

At the regular meeting with the 'next neighbor' development team, Wei Kun put forward his plan for the money-throwing circle, which was unanimously opposed by everyone.

Among them, Song Yuanpeng is the most distinctive one.

"Mr. Wei, isn't this method too 'hurting the enemy by a thousand and self-inflicting eight hundred'?"

Not to mention how much cash the company needs to prepare for the money circle, if WeChat feels threatened and launches cash incentives at the same time, can your company beat it?

This is the problem that Song Yuanpeng is most worried about.

"Mr. Wei, I also think that this method is not appropriate, the world of social products is actually very large, enough to accommodate a number of excellent social products, such as Momo, even if WeChat further suppresses Momo, but Momo is still surviving very well, I don't think we need to > at present"Differentiated competition!"

Wei Kun didn't expect that his proposal would attract everyone's opposition, but they were also for the good of the company, and Wei Kun was still very pleased with this.

"Do you have any plans?"

Skipping the proposal just now, Wei Kun asked everyone.

"Mr. Wei, I have been thinking about classifying social products these days, for example, according to the strength of social relationships, they can be divided into strong relationship social software, weak relationship social software, and stranger social software. ”

"According to the function, they can be divided into tool type, community type, media type, etc.; according to the content of communication, they can be divided into text type, picture type, video type, etc.; and according to the age group of users, they can be divided into: young type, middle-aged type, elderly type, etc., ......"

Song Yuanpeng, as the leader of the team, took the lead in speaking.

Referring to these classifications, WeChat can be considered a strong relational text-based tool software, and its users are mainly middle-aged and above. ”

Saying that, Song Yuanpeng posted some information he had done recently, which showed that 'the people with the most WeChat usage are concentrated in 46-55 years old', which can corroborate what he just said.

"It can be seen that although its user base is huge and its market share is high, it is still far from reaching the point where it can cater to all users and all needs – in fact, WeChat is neither possible nor necessary. ”

Therefore, if a social software is sufficiently differentiated from WeChat in terms of function or user positioning, it is entirely possible to quickly and firmly occupy a certain niche market under the pressure of WeChat. ”

Speaking of which, Song Yuanpeng talked about some of his thoughts on the positioning of the 'Neighbor' software these days.

"If the sea memory confidant Tianya is next to each other, our 'neighbor' main thing is video chat, although we also have the functions of WeChat, such as text chat, voice chat, circle of friends, etc., but video chat is our main function, video chat, audible and visible. ”

"We have a time difference with WeChat...... Before the release of the WeChat video chat function, seize the next part of the user market, and then divide the strength and weakness of the software experience. ”

After listening to Song Yuanpeng's words, Wei Kun disagreed with some of his views.

"Can you guarantee that we will be able to launch the app before WeChat updates the video chat function, and how much time difference is there?"

Wei Kun admits that Song Yuanpeng's ability in software technology is also a big name in the field of social software, but from the perspective of his prophet, some of his ideas are still a little too conservative, and even too conceited.

WeChat won't leave them too much time at all, how did Mi Chat die in the first place? Isn't it that Tencent reacted too quickly?

If there is a software on the market that focuses on video chat, then WeChat's video chat function will be launched faster, and the time left for 'next to the neighbor' will not be too long at all.

This time may be half a month, or even only a few days, not waiting for the 'neighbor' to expand, WeChat users have already experienced the video chat function, and it is impossible to seize this group of users at this time.

Self-confidence is okay, but conceit is not!

Hearing Wei Kun's words, Song Yuanpeng could only react, and after thinking about it for a long time, he sighed and shook his head and replied, "The time difference may not be too long." ”

Although he has not been in contact with his senior and role model, WeChat founder Zhang Xiaolong, Song Yuanpeng also knows that if the video chat function appears, the WeChat team will immediately follow up the development, which is something he did not think about.

"You don't have to worry about the funds, what you need to do is to integrate the function of cash reward invitation code in the Link APP, not only invite new members to get cash rewards, but also daily text chat, voice chat, video chat, send moments, get address book permissions, etc., these tasks can get gold rewards, and gold coins can also be exchanged for RMB. ”

What Wei Kun said is a model used by Toutiao to increase users' dependence on apps.

"As for the mathematical model and numerical aspects of this whole system, you don't have to worry, I will send game-related numerical planners to help you complete the development of this function. ”

Wei Kun can't completely stop the behavior of some people in the user group, but he can minimize the loss in this area through a set of rigorous mathematical models. As long as the cost and energy of the input is greater than the output, the idea of some people picking wool will naturally be eliminated.

Wei Kun said as the development team on the side carefully took notes in their notebooks.

"In addition, there is another point, the follow-up may need to be connected with the technical personnel of the three network operators. ”

Hearing Wei Kun's words, Song Yuanpeng couldn't help frowning, docking with the operator? Or three? What is this for?

After Wei Kun paused, he said another of his sniper tricks on WeChat, "In the near future, I will communicate with the person in charge of the three networks operator, mainly to discuss the relevant matters of the directional traffic package of our software." ”

After the software is launched, a long-term activity will be held for the user's traffic tariff, such as the activity of exchanging the corresponding traffic for chat time, and the specific exchange method needs to be discussed, so let's just remember it. ”

。 m.