Originally, Tencent's success was built on the fact that they had found a clear profit model, that is, games, relying on QQ's huge traffic to attract traffic to their game business.

Whether it is the QQ show or the diamond fan aristocracy system, the income of these is not worth mentioning compared with the game income.

In fact, Tencent's earliest game attempt was not successful, and it was not until the beginning of QQ Tang that it found the trick to tap the game business, and then in just one year, the number of users in the QQ game lobby surpassed that of Lianzhong Games, which has a history of nearly ten years.

After the number of users surpassed Lianzhong Games, the snowball effect became more and more obvious, and the user scale of Lianzhong Games quickly fell from one million to less than 10,000.

Later, Bao Yueqiao, chairman of Lianzhong Games, said at the meeting: Unlike large-scale online games, the rules of chess and card games are fixed and lack technical thresholds, and players and QQ users are highly overlapping, and Tencent is easy to imitate.

At that time, users also said: QQ game lobby and Lianzhong game are directly copied from the game rules to the distribution of interfaces and functions, or the prompts, if they are not familiar enough users, they can't even tell which is QQ game and which is Lianzhong game.

Tencent's game kingdom reached its peak after Tencent's representation of Dungeons & Warriors and CrossFire, both of which brought huge revenues to Tencent.

Now the situation is different, with Riot Games in front, after Riot Games enters the Chinese market in the future, it will be difficult for Tencent to replicate their success in the field of games, when the players' traffic is monopolized by Riot Games, and they have a vision of the future, they can cut off the popular games in China in advance, and even if Tencent can achieve something in video games, the ceiling will become lower.

In such a situation, coupled with Zhou Xin's control of Tencent, he knew that he needed to help Tencent find a new profit model.

At the same time, he is also confident that if Tencent goes overseas as soon as possible and does Facebook's business, Tencent will not be worse than the original Tencent in terms of scale and revenue.

Compared with domestic advertisers, foreign advertisers offer much higher unit prices, and they are priced in US dollars.

"Pony, with the bursting of the dot-com bubble over the course of the year, coupled with the success of quora, the industry has begun to have serious doubts about doing it on a large scale.

Does more users really lead to greater revenue? So much so that advertisers also begin to doubt when they place advertisements, wondering if the ads they place on the Internet can really be converted into results?

In fact, users are always treasures, whether it is advertising or some other value-added services, users are the basis of these.

Without users, can QQ Show be successful? Without users, will Quora's paid Q&A and gold selection be successful?

The original approach will be questioned because of the lack of a set of measurement standards, and it is not reasonable for advertisers to place ads on the Internet and then use click-through rates as a reference.

For example, Brand A ran a $1 million year-long ad on Yahoo, and over that time, they saw a 1,000% increase in homepage views compared to before the ad was launched.

It looks good, but is this million worth it, and how do you evaluate it? No one can tell.

This 1000% increase in page views, Yahoo has data on how many users clicked on the ad link on the page where the ad was placed and clicked to the homepage of brand A. But how much has the sales figure grown? How much of the growth is due to Yahoo? No one can say for sure.

Moreover, brand A has to rely on $1 million in Internet advertising, how much sales will be increased, and this money is worth it, and no one can explain clearly.

Nowadays, the vast majority of Internet companies rely heavily on advertising revenue, and Internet advertising is a blind box for advertising providers, lacking an evaluation system to measure the effect.

This is just the status quo, after the development of online shopping matures in the future, the advertising party can directly put the e-shopping link, so that the conversion rate is clear at a glance.

The huge number of users of enterprise QQ, personal QQ and mobile QQ will become a solid foundation for Tencent's advertising business.

As for how to place ads, it seems that ads cannot be placed in instant messaging software.

Pony, we've made a mobile instant messaging app for this time, which combines instant messaging and blogging functions at the same time.

Since I only have two engineering prototypes in my hands right now, Pony, you can see it first, and then you should look at it again. ”

Zhou Xin handed the prototype of Matrix to Pony, "The row of applications at the bottom of the main page of the mobile phone are NewPay and NewChat, NewChat is the mobile instant messaging software we developed. ”

When people in later generations see NewChat, they will definitely have a sense of WeChat.

Zhou Xin gave a general introduction to the functions of NewChat, and then used NewChat in his hand to send a message to the account associated with Pony's mobile phone.

"Welcome to the world of NewChat."

Pony didn't feel anything special about NewChat, but felt that the whole interface was very simple design, with only a few buttons.

The appearance of such an app on today's mobile phones is still quite amazing, and in the information era when other mobile phones are all composed of pixels, the display effect of Matrix has made him feel delicate.

Pony was also complaining about the name in his heart, and he sighed that Zhou Xin really likes the word New very much, whether it is a payment app or an instant messaging software on his mobile phone, he must put New in front.

Li Jingyi's understanding is that this is Zhou Xin's bad taste.

"It's going to be a new beginning." Pony used NewChat to send a message back to Zhou Xin.

The physical key feel of the Matrix keyboard and the vibration feedback given by the horizontal motor make the typing experience far better than any other mobile phone today.

From the outside, the matrix will be larger than the 9-key phone because it is a 26-button phone, and after getting started, Pony found that the curved treatment of the frame of the matrix phone will give him the illusion of thinness and lightness.

Holding and typing with both hands is an illusion that the world is under control.

Newman: "Pony, I originally planned to launch NewChat, as a mobile instant messaging software, since now I have a controlling stake in Tencent, this instant messaging software will also be renamed WeChat, translated in Chinese, it will be called WeChat." ”

"Integrating into Tencent, you can see it as QQ on the mobile side, which can realize the interconnection of information with QQ on the PC side."

Secondman: "Okay, I have another question, in my opinion, whether it is WeChat or Xinxin, it is all mobile instant messaging software, and I look at it now, it is very similar to SMS. ”

"I've just started WeChat, and I have a feeling that this is a more complex text message."

"Based on this logic, SMS focuses on acquaintance socialization, that is to say, you know and know who you are sending text messages to and who you are receiving text messages."

"And QQ focuses on stranger socialization, no one knows who you are in reality, and the proportion of people who can switch from online to offline relationships is very small."

"If we get through, will there be a conflict in strategic positioning between acquaintance socialization and stranger socialization?"

Newman is Zhou Xin, and this horse is also set up by Zhou Xin.

When Zhou Xin used WeChat to send messages, he sent them one by one, and Pony Ma quickly mastered this trick and sent them one by one.

Newman: "yes, so it's called WeChat, not qq. ”

"What you said is indeed a problem, we need to think about the relationship between enterprise QQ and how to do a good job of balance and interconnection between these three products."

After posting this sentence, Zhou Xin stopped typing, and in just five minutes of typing time, the whole room was very quiet, and Li Jingyi could only hear the sound of the mobile phone keyboard tapping.

Zhou Xin said: "Pony, you just said something wrong, that is, WeChat is similar to SMS, and there is a big difference between WeChat and SMS.

The only similarity between them is the text message sent above. ”

Zhou Xin raised his phone to his mouth, and then pressed a button: "WeChat can send voice." ”

About half a minute after sending, Pony Ma's mobile phone received a voice message, no need for Zhou Xin to say, the red dot next to this voice message prompted him to click, Pony clicked, Zhou Xin's voice came from the phone.

Pony closed his eyes and whispered, "What an amazing idea, combining text messaging and phone message functionality."

No, it's not just as simple as leaving a phone message, WeChat is an instant messaging app on mobile phones, and users can do other things while replying to other people's messages through this feature.

Originally, I was thinking about the size of the matrix and the setting of 26 keys, which caused the user to have to operate with both hands.

With the message function, users can operate with both one and both hands.

The only problem is that if the voice is sent for too long, the network transmission speed will cause a long delay.

But this is not a problem, the mobile phone comes with a recording function, you only need to store the recording of the content of the content locally, and then transmit the information from the background. ”

Zhou Xin: "As it is Pony, the voice content below the second will be directly transmitted over the network, and the voice content of more than 5 seconds will be stored locally before transmission.

Networking is a big problem.

This is just one of the functions of WeChat, and he also has a series of functions such as Moments, scanning the code to add friends, and drifting bottles. ”

After Zhou Xin introduced them separately, he said: "This is a series of functions, and SMS is just its appearance. ”

Zhou Xin has not yet introduced the official account that will be launched in the future, and after the official account is launched, the concept of new media will be further promoted to more fields.

"So ads can be placed in the circle of friends.

In this way, the user's perception is minimized, and the user experience will not be affected at the same time, and the purpose is achieved.

In the future, we need to explore the evaluation system of advertising effectiveness and how to accurately place advertisements.

This will be Tencent's core source of profit, including corporate QQ, and in the face of consumer-oriented enterprises, this will be our best premium means. ”

What Zhou Xin didn't finish is that if Tencent is just an Internet company in Huaguo, then their best way to make money is still games, which is a time-proven means. If Tencent wants to go overseas, then advertising will be a better form of business.

Facebook can live well on advertising costs at Ameriken, and YouTube can give bloggers a high share with the help of patch ads. Huaguo's benchmarking of these two Internet companies, Renren and Tudou, has no sense of existence, and the essence is that the advertising costs of developed countries are much higher than those of Huaguo.

"What is precision advertising, the search engine we just mentioned is a kind of advertising that only search engines can do.

I'm going to talk about the other one, I have another company called Riot Games, and Riot Games has started advertising now, and Riot Games has a whole team that specializes in advertising, and specializes in algorithms for advertising.

We will work together to build a portrait of the user based on the user's use in Riot communities, active forums, and grabbing keywords from his past comments, which is based on how many games he prefers to play, which type of game he is most willing to pay for, and then determine his future payment preferences.

Then according to the user portrait, the corresponding advertisements are specially placed for him.

In other words, the same page, different users, after logging in to the account, see different advertising content.

Real-time strategy games will be delivered to users who prefer real-time strategy games, and simulation management games will be delivered to users of simulation management games.

This is a precise push based on user preferences, where content is pushed according to the user's preferences.

The payment method is also humane, and the game developers who purchased this method, we are not a one-time fee, but to increase the share ratio, the general Riot game is to extract 30% of the proportion, and this kind of advertising customers, our share ratio is 50%, and the share ratio of some old games is even 70%.

In other words, the better it sells, the higher the profit of Riot Games.

There is another advertising push model, which is launched by NewPay, which carries out precise advertising according to the user's credit card limit.

Because the vast majority of users bind their credit cards to NewPay, we include a clause in the electronic agreement that allows them to access their credit card limit.

That is, we can know how much credit card a user has each month, and how much they are using it. The bank's credit card has helped NewPay make a judgment to judge the user's repayment ability and willingness to repay.

Based on these data, NewPay correspondingly pushes insurance, funds, savings and other services to users.

This is a precise push based on data analysis.

If instant messaging is the cornerstone of Tencent, then this set of advertising algorithms is the nutrient of Tencent's growth rate. ”

After Riot Games and NewPay's delivery mechanism was introduced to the market, users did not have an intuitive feeling that they would not have two accounts, and they would not find that the store recommendations they saw were different from the digital community roll ads.

Those who have an intuitive feeling for this are mainly advertisers.

Especially the game developers, when the marketing team of Riot Games talked to them, the game developers were shocked by this new set of advertising methods, which logically showed a meticulous advertising mechanism, which was much better than the previous open-blind box advertising mechanism.

These game developers also started out by putting their previous games on Riot Games, which were already outdated offline products with impressive sales, and they were revitalized after being put into Riot Games' online store, and Riot Games' commission was even lower than that of offline stores.

Later, more and more game developers put their latest blockbusters on Riot Games, and even a few game developers completely abandoned offline channels.

Now that Riot Games' delivery mechanism has been launched, it is still customary for everyone to test the waters with the old games first, and the old games will not be invested in marketing expenses again, and now it is not impossible to do another round of marketing by increasing the share ratio.

The effect of marketing is good and bad, just like the free channel at the starting point, the same distribution mechanism, some can soar, and some just have an extra income. But in the case of Riot Games, they judge the effectiveness of the ads as a whole and negotiate with the game developers.

NewPay is even more exaggerated, in the absence of this set of advertising distribution mechanism, the publisher will offer a very high price, especially insurance companies and fund companies focusing on Internet investment.

For example, Ameriken's car insurance is priced at around $100 per month, which determines their willingness and ability to advertise highly. NewPay's monthly subscription service is also popular with insurance companies.

After the bursting of the NASDAQ bubble, fund companies lost their figure, and insurance companies became more fanatical.

So much so that when Zhou Xin released that NewPay was about to carry out the next round of financing, Peter Thiel was frightened by the crazy Wall Street investment banks, and everyone came to him if they couldn't find Zhou Xin. Every day, well-known figures from various investment banks come to visit NewPay.

If these Wall Street bigwigs knew that Zhou Xin had spent half a day communicating with Pony alone, they would definitely feel resentful.

After listening to this, Pony asked, "I can fully understand the benefits of precision advertising and the appeal to advertisers.

But how does our instant messaging app analyze user preferences? Unless we go and grab his chat history.

The problem is that if we go to scrape user chat history, once it is exposed, it will be a devastating blow to us. ”

Zhou Xin nodded: "I didn't let you capture the user's chat history, so this is a topic that Tencent wants to study."

This is also a test for you, I only have a vague idea at present, you can also think about this problem with the Tencent team after you go back, how Tencent can do accurate advertising.

There is still about half a year before the launch of the matrix phone, and in this half year, you need to think about two main questions:

How to build a system without affecting the existing business.

The other is how to do Tencent's advertising. ”

After Pony left with answers and questions, Mr. Zhou took Ms. Li back to his San Francisco villa, a landmark mansion in Hillsboro.

"Jingyi, you can choose a room as your accommodation here, you treat this as a job, a somewhat special job, you settle down first, and then we will talk." Zhou Xin said.

After Li Jingyi came out, Li Jingyi, who was dressed completely different from the current style of the young people of Ameriken, sat on the sofa in the living room, and the whole person felt out of place with the decoration style of the villa.

Zhou Xin got up and shook hands with her: "Today is officially inducted."

Or the point we talked about before, that is, your future positioning, do you want to be simply a vase, that is, to cooperate with me to play a couple on the occasion of my social outing, it is not ruled out that we will really become a couple in the future.

Either way, it's just the role of a vase, or it's still involved in my work, as a secretary, doing some auxiliary work.

Or maybe they are deeply involved in one of my businesses and help me manage that part of the business. You need to give me an answer now.

Whichever one you choose, you'll need to play the role of a good girlfriend in public. ”

After Li Jingyi came to Ameriken, she listened to a product discussion directly in Zhou Xin's office, which was an eye-opener for her and how Zhou Xin thought about products.

Before coming to the residential area, Li Jingyi was a little inexplicably apprehensive, not knowing what would happen, and when Zhou Xin finished her opening remarks, she was both working and joining, and she instantly relaxed: "I hope to be deeply involved in a certain piece of business."

Because I am completely new, I am not interested in the role of secretary, but I am also unwilling to vase, I still hope to participate in the business, learn something, and open my eyes. ”

Zhou Xin nodded: "Understood, you go to Matrix, it's the mobile phone I showed just now, you, as a newcomer, give some opinions on the product."

Your position at Matrix is as a secretary, doing some testing work.

Because we will be together for a very long time in the future, I will dynamically adjust your position based on your performance.

If you have any ideas, you can also communicate with me at any time. ”

Zhou Xin thought for a while, and then continued: "You can also see, I am very short of people now, and the vast majority of the executives of these companies under my command are professional managers, and it is difficult to have loyalty at all.

I hope that in the future, I will be able to slowly replace them all with people I know, so as long as you perform well, there will be a lot of opportunities.

In addition, I would like to remind you that the top priority after you come here is to be proficient in English, especially oral expression and listening, which will directly determine your work efficiency. ”

Li Jingyi said: "Okay. ”

English is not a difficult task for students who can be admitted to Yan University on their own, let alone in an all-English environment. Li Jingyi also had a period of English listening and speaking before coming.

Zhou Xin said: "Then you have a good rest, the intensity of work in Matrix will definitely be far beyond your imagination, although we are strictly in accordance with the five-day eight-hour work week, but the eight hours of high-speed brain operation is more tiring than the twelve hours that do not need to use the brain." ”

There is also in the evening, which is to make up for yesterday.

And then let's say, although there was only one chapter the day before yesterday, it was also a 6,000-word chapter!

(End of chapter)