As an entrepreneur who regards YY as his confidant, Ma Teng naturally logs in to two chat apps at the same time every day. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

One QQ, one YY.

Even if it contributes a daily active number to the opponent, it will not hesitate.

Anyway, in the Internet world, in fact, the first trial of any software is often professionals from competing companies. And it is these professionals who are the first to discover the problems and characteristics of the software.

As for ordinary consumers, it often takes a few months of ignorance before they can completely enter the state.

On this day, it was only a few days after the winter vacation, and the Spring Festival was less than a week away. After Ma Teng opened the computer and logged in to YY as usual, he saw a new function popping up on YY.

"Who you might know? Wasn't this feature already available last time Renren was revised? What's new?"

The new feature that pops up is called "People You May Know", and the effect is to list some potential people who can be added as YY friends, but the user has not yet added them.

Since last year's "Renren" upgrade, YY network technology should also be aware that "100% emphasis on real-name authentication may lose potential customers, especially users who are very resistant to submitting personal information online", at that time there has been a wave of revisions - any user who wants to use "Renren", from last year's "Girls' Generation" and other draft activities to gather Zara, no longer have to submit personal information certification materials, but can use the "invitation system" to obtain quasi-real-name effect.

That is, send a "verification invitation" to the five people you know who have already had their real names on YY or Alipay, as long as the other party clicks on the confirmation.

In the daily use of YY and Renren, there is no difference between the people who get the quasi-real-name effect through this invitation system and the old users who have really submitted their bank card ID card information. The only difference is that a user who is a quasi-real-name authenticator cannot become an "invited confirmer" for other new users again.

This is to prevent some groups that maliciously register non-real-name accounts from snowballing after obtaining several numbers.

A by-product of the "invitation certification system" is to recommend "people you may know" to users. When this feature was launched last year, it really became popular, and it also attracted nearly 10 million new users for YY and Renren, which really gave Ma Teng a headache.

It's a pity that because Tengyun's QQ can't identify the user's real identity in 04 years, and the user's real-name information is unknown, so even if Tengyun wants to copy, this function point can't be done, and there is no relevant big data support.

However, the drainage effect of each new feature cannot be unlimited, with the end of the "Girls' Generation" and other Internet celebrity artist talent shows in the fourth quarter of last year, the number of new netizens who are in a hurry to open YY or Renren has also begun to decrease rapidly.

Tengyun's strategic research team has also studied it, and believes that after this battle, the student groups in Huaxia have basically been sucked away by Gu Cheng's YY and Renren (only referring to university and middle school students. 05 Elementary school students still can't go online, not counted), no matter how much Gu Cheng tosses, he can't get more users through this channel.

Now, YY has upgraded and fine-tuned "people you may know" again, which can't help but make Ma Teng a little suspicious and puzzled.

Isn't this trick old? Is it a new trick?

Ma Teng himself didn't have that much time to get a feel for his opponent's competitors little by little, so he chose a quicker method.

A phone call, call the company's CTO Zhang Zhidong and Ren Yuxin of the game division to interpret it together.

……

"What is the difference between this upgrade of the 'People You May Know' invitation function and last year's? ”

Ma Teng will not be polite to the old buddies, and the questions are always so straightforward.

"The authority has been upgraded, and the revised 'invitation system quasi-real-name authentication' can not only be applied to YY users, but also can be bundled with Alipay. Zhang Zhidong obviously reacted faster than Ma Teng, and he only tried it for a few minutes as soon as he went to work that day, and he interpreted it clearly.

Alipay's requirements for the real-name system are stricter than those of the YY/Renren account, because Alipay must be bound to a bank card to open it. Therefore, those new users who are added through the invitation system on Renren will not open Alipay by default.

Ma Teng immediately reacted and grasped the key point: "In other words, the purpose of this revision of YY is just to help promote Alipay and pull Alipay again, not to continue to expand the number of users of YY itself?"

Zhang Zhidong and Ren Yuxin glanced at each other, and no one dared to make this assertion. In the end, Zhang Zhidong said: "This is the case in theory, but I think Gu Cheng is not so simple this time." ”

Ren Yuxin seemed to think of something, and added: "I heard that 'Alipay' will also release a new revision in the past two days, and YY has done a good job of secrecy, and I can't find out any truth at hand at present." Could it be that this adjustment of YY will take effect in conjunction with Alipay?"

Ma Teng nodded: "It's not impossible, it seems that just looking at this revision of YY, it's not very clear." ”

Gu Cheng didn't let Ma Teng worry for long, because the mystery was quickly revealed.

Before the end of the day, Alipay's upgrade and revision plan was also announced.

There are fifty or sixty million Alipay users across the country, and when they all open Alipay online, or when they are scanned by the "Alipay Security Guard", an important upgrade reminder pops up.

After clicking upgrade, a new function linked to YY appeared on Alipay: from now on, Alipay will get the permission to map the user's friend list on YY, and then send and receive red envelopes.

This is the gift that Gu Cheng prepared for Ma Teng before the Spring Festival in 05.

Maybe it's because Gu Cheng has many more cards in his hand than Ma Feng's cards in parallel time and space, so he doesn't need to play the crooked card of "letting Alipay personally go out to socialize and add a bunch of Alipay friends".

YY and Alipay are both software that Gu Cheng absolutely controls, and they are neither listed companies nor have they received investment from private equity funds. The shareholding structure of these two companies today, in addition to the founders' shares, is some management shares, which is very clean.

Gu Cheng has absolute control within YY Network Technology and Alipay, so it is completely possible for the two companies to fully communicate with each other.

Ma Teng and Zhang Zhidong have been waiting for this "second boot" to land, and Alipay doesn't know how many times they have swiped it every day, so as soon as it is updated, Tengyun will immediately monitor it.

"Red envelopes? This is an upgraded version of Alipay's personal transfer function, right?

"It's no wonder that Alipay also allows 'invitation-based passive real-name realization'. After opening this opening, those YY users who have not bound a bank card, as long as they are sent red envelopes by more than 5 real-name friends, can unlock Alipay's 'quasi-real-name system' qualifications and use the money collected by red envelopes for online shopping. ”

This setting is similar to the later QQ wallet in parallel time and space - not a WeChat wallet, but a QQ wallet.

QQ wallet can receive red envelopes by default, and you can use the change after receiving it, but you must bind a bank card to transfer money and use advanced functions.

The trick Gu Cheng is using now is this scale.

Ma Teng and Zhang Zhidong roughly understood the surface setting, and then tried to send each other an Alipay red envelope with YY.

I sent 100 yuan to test the water.

Click send, and then a bright red envelope pattern pops up in the other party's YY chat window. You have to click again to open it and take out the money inside.

When withdrawing money, it seems that some animation effects have been made, which is similar to the magic expression that QQ just launched last year. A few dollars of red envelopes, only one of the bags is opened. If it is a large bag of more than 100 pieces, there are also spray effects such as streamers and fireworks.

"It's really just the animation and the art! What's the big deal, it's no different from the original transfer function. How many new users can this attract?" After seeing through the essence of the matter, Ma Teng's heart couldn't help but feel a burst of disdain.

Gu Cheng often attacked him with the excuse of "Tengyun will not innovate a lot, but will only change the fur after copying", but he didn't expect that this time Gu Cheng himself would rely on this kind of fur optimization in art to make up the numbers.

In contrast, Zhang Zhidong's vision was more old-fashioned, and he immediately saw the damage of Gu Cheng's new move. He reminded:

"This feature can't be underestimated, at least it expands the audience of Alipay - users who don't have a bank card can't open Alipay. Now at least a person who doesn't have a card only needs to find five people who have a card and have also opened Alipay to send him a red envelope, and he can unlock the permission - this is a very big temptation for primary and secondary school students who don't have a bank card. It is possible that they can rely on this feature to collect the New Year's money.

Moreover, if the parents did not open Alipay, the New Year's money collected by this model would not be confiscated by the parents, or there is no technical possibility to confiscate it. Unless parents follow their children to open an Alipay - the traction effect behind this should not be underestimated, and one can bring out a nest of users. ”

Ma Teng thought about it and felt that it really made sense. He also put away the contempt of "this is just an upgraded version of Alipay's transfer function", and with solemnity, he closely examined the real motives behind Gu Cheng.

Soon, he found more highlights of Alipay's red envelopes.

For example, Alipay red envelopes can not only transfer money one-to-one, but also pull a group for group sending. When sending, you can set the total amount and how many parts it is divided into, or you can set "whether the amount of each red envelope is equal".

If the amount is not equal, Alipay will automatically divide the red envelope into a rated number of copies at the moment when the red envelope is generated, and then arrange them in order from largest to smallest, and the faster the person grabs it, the more money will be shared.

The further down he looked, the more solemn Ma Teng's mood became.

He could have guessed that technically, if Gu Cheng wanted YY and Alipay to come up with such a function, it could have been developed a few months earlier, or even half a year ago.

But Gu Cheng didn't take it out in advance, but threw it out with the eloquence of "QQ Tenpay has two or three months left to be developed".

Obviously, Gu Cheng just wanted to carry out a surprise attack, and after the new function was launched, when his peers had not had time to copy it, he took advantage of the Chinese New Year, the peak season of red envelopes, to circle a wave of fans.