The origin of QQ

classification: computer/network > > Internet

Problem description:

Why do QQ chat, QQ candy and Chery QQ cars all use QQ?

Analysis:

In the summer of 1996, three young Israelis, Weisig, Wadi and Goldfinger, got together and decided to develop a software to make full use of the characteristics of instant communication on the Internet to realize rapid and direct communication between people, which led to the design idea of ICQ. At that time, it was almost a personal "toy" for them to communicate with each other online in time, and a small company named Mirabilis was established to provide ICQ services to all registered users.

Later, AOL bought ICQ for $287 million. In May this year, its number of users has exceeded 1 million, with an average of 1 million users online every day, and each user spends an average of three hours online.

in 1999, a large number of online instant messaging software imitating ICQ emerged in China, such as the earliest Picq, Oicq, OMMO, etc. Sina, Netease, Sohu and others also developed similar software, such as Sina Pager. The predecessor of QQ, OICQ, was first launched in February 1999.

QQ was able to stand out among so many online instant messaging software, and eventually all its competitors were buried, occupying more than 95% of the online instant messaging software market in China, partly because of its strength and partly because of its luck.

Tencent was created by accident

On November 11th, 1998, Ma Huateng and his classmate Zhang Zhidong were formally registered as "Shenzhen Tencent Computer System Co., Ltd.". At that time, the company's main business was to expand the wireless network paging system. At the beginning of the company's establishment, the main business was to establish an online paging system for paging stations. This software development project for enterprises or units can be said to be the best choice for almost all small and medium-sized network service companies.

In 1997, Ma Huateng came into contact with ICQ and became its user. He personally felt the charm of ICQ and saw its limitations: first, the English interface, and second, it was quite difficult to use it, which made ICQ widely used in China, but it was never particularly popular, and most of it was limited to the "net-worm" level experts.

at first, Ma Huateng and his partners wanted to develop a Chinese ICQ software and then sell it to a powerful enterprise. At that time, Tencent didn't think about running a Chinese ICQ that required huge investment but could not make money. At that time, it was because a large enterprise intended to invest a large amount of money in the field of Chinese ICQ. Tencent also wrote a project construction book and started to develop and design OICQ. When bidding, Tencent did not win the bid, and as a result, Tencent decided to do OICQ itself.

You know, at that time, the price that Tencent gave OICQ was only over 3,.

Later, when Tencent began to develop rapidly, Ma Huateng said in a timely manner, "We need our own Chinese network software, and we need our own ICQ!" But in fact, Tencent's launch of OICQ was purely accidental. If that big company didn't intend to invest in the field of Chinese ICQ, there would be no OICQ. If Tencent won the bid, there would be no OICQ of Tencent. Tencent's success is partly luck and partly strength.

Winning the race

Many people have been questioning why QQ, which is not particularly good in function, can dominate the crowd and finally almost monopolize the online instant messaging software market in China. Yes, from the functional point of view, QQ has always been nothing special, but compared with other online instant messaging software, there is nothing special. Everyone imitates ICQ.

however, the reason why QQ can succeed is not its powerful functions, but its reasonable interface design and simple user operation. Compared with other online instant messaging software of the same generation as QQ, such as Sina pager and OMMO, their functions are not weaker than QQ at first, especially OMMO, which launched many functions much stronger than QQ as soon as it came out, such as e-mail and network hard disk.

In February, 1999, Tencent launched the first test version of OICQ on the Internet, which contained very simple functions, including only simple online instant messaging functions, but its interface design was very commendable. In fact, although Tencent has launched more than ten versions of QQ software so far, its interface has not changed, which shows that the interface design of Tencent OICQ software is very reasonable from the beginning.

This made the number of registered OICQ users of Tencent reach more than 2, in just two months. Although this is only less than the number of new registered users of Tencent in one day, it was a considerable number at that time.

In the following months, Tencent launched OICQ 99a, which successively added public chat rooms, file transfer, wireless paging, short message service, voice chat, etc. The launch of OICQ 99a established Tencent's dominant position in the online instant messaging market in China. By the end of 1999, the registered users of OICQ had reached an unprecedented 1.3 million, with an average of more than 15, online users, occupying that time.

Surprisingly, after Tencent added so many functions, OICQ's interface still hasn't changed.

In fact, OICQ has won by this time, and the characteristics of online instant software determine the occurrence of Matthew effect in this market. It is like two cities, the more prosperous people are willing to go to, the more prosperous the city will be, and the more barren the city will be.

Tree University began to catch the wind, and QQ staged a big face change

By 2, Tencent's OICQ had basically occupied more than 9% of the online instant messaging market in China, and it had basically locked in the victory. At this time, trouble came. AOL sent a lawyer's letter to Tencent. ICQ is a registered trademark of AOL, so any similar software that uses the word ICQ in its name is at risk of infringing AOL's trademark right. Ask Tencent to change the name of OICQ, otherwise it will go to court.

So in OICQ version 2 Build 325, OICQ made another change of self-protection in advance, but the 325 version called itself "QQ2" from the beginning of the installation file to avoid legal conflict with ICQ. This QQ was originally a nickname for OICQ by netizens, but it became the official new name of OICQ overnight.

In this version, Tencent also made another big move, that is, it replaced the well-known cartoon portraits such as Donald Duck, Garfield, Kitty Cat, Pikachu, Popeye, Tom Cat, Smurfs, Shi Nuobi and sonic the hedgehog, and replaced them with cartoon portraits designed and produced by Tencent itself. Because Tencent has been using these famous cartoon portraits for free, it has not been authorized by the owners of these cartoon portraits. If these owners sue Tencent and demand huge compensation, the fate of QQ is unimaginable.

A chubby penguin proudly said, "Don't CALL me, QQ me!" " This is a picture of a fashion poster at the moment, dancing lightly in the online world. Various brand derivatives with the image of this penguin are being sold in prominent positions on well-known websites such as Sina. This penguin also holds the most domestic internet records: it has the largest number of registered users-8 million; The highest number of simultaneous online-1.8 million; The highest number of daily advertisements-1 billion. You curled your lips and said, Isn't that OICQ of Tencent? Just a follower.

-But it is this follower who has caused his follower ICQ (short for I Seek You) such a headache that he has started an international lawsuit. Because this follower has occupied 95% of the market in China, and has ranked third in the world in ICQ products. Not counting this, by the end of this year, VCD, DVD, TV set embedded with OICQ will be listed in domestic shopping malls, and even the new mobile phones of foreign mobile phone giants.

-In the cold winter of the Internet, this penguin of Tencent is getting fatter and fatter. Today, Tencent's money channel is directly proportional to the degree of love of penguins. Since July, Tencent's cash flow has also "turned positive" in advance. On October 6th, Beijing Road, the most prosperous commercial street in Guangzhou, opened an OICQ penguin image store. Toys, clothing, ornaments and daily necessities all take two lovely penguins as the theme. This time, Tencent is imitating Disney.

-Accidental

-It is better to say that the founder of Tencent is a genius than a series of accidental * * *.

-OICQ is actually one of the instant messaging products. The earliest founders of instant messaging products were three Israeli youths, who made it in 1996 and named it ICQ. In 1998, when the number of registered users of ICQ reached 12 million, it was taken by AOL and bought at a sky-high price of 287 million US dollars. At present, ICQ has more than 1 million users, mainly in America and Europe, and has become the largest instant messaging system in the world. In 1998, Tencent was just a small company integrating value-added service software and systems, and its owners were five or six young people full of entrepreneurial enthusiasm. All businesses have meager profits and live an embarrassing life without three meals. In 1999, they made an instant messaging system, bid for it to Guangdong Telecom, and later sent it to several other places, but they were not liked. Frustrated, several people looked at the ugly duckling that they had worked so hard to hatch, and could not bear to throw it away. Think about it and put it on your own website as a free service for users. This is the prototype of OICQ. -When one day, several people found that this system had 1 people online at the same time, they were surprised and happy. However, with the increase of the number of users, the company needs to invest more and more in this system, which accounts for half of the company's cost, but it can't bring any profit. Life is already tight, how can I spare money for such a luxurious gadget? Some people advocate giving up, but in the end they don't.

-At that time, there were many similar products. PICQ, TICQ, CICQ and GICQ were actually followers of ICQ. Shortly after the launch of Tencent, Sina also launched Sina Paging, and Sohu, Netease and Yahoo all launched similar services in the domestic market. The biggest rival ICQ didn't have a Chinese version at that time. Surrounded by many competitors, Tencent did not think that one day the company would survive on this product.

-Zhang Zhihao, general manager of Tencent Beijing Company, was originally in the headquarters of Zhongbei Paging Group. In 1999, Ma Huateng, chairman and CEO of Tencent, pretended to be an engineer and came to Zhongbei to debug equipment, because Tencent could not afford an engineer at that time. In the computer room, Ma Huateng taught Zhang Zhihao how to use OICQ. Zhang Zhihao, who studied computer applications, was sensitive to the possibility that this was a huge market opportunity, and later encouraged the boss of North China to buy Tencent. It's a pity that people in North China thought that he had told a joke that was not funny. But only a few months later, Tencent began to be glad that no one was willing to buy itself at that time, because the number of OICQ users was growing at their incredible speed, and the user growth curve had almost turned into a steep straight line. They don't even know what happened!

-but the number of users can't be eaten as a meal. Ma Huateng, 28, found a bank. But banks have never heard that the number of registered users can apply for mortgage loans; Domestic investors are concerned about how many computers Tencent has and how many fixed assets it has. Ma Huateng said with a chill: Sir, my value is not Tencent's present, but Tencent's future. Finally, IDG and PCG took over Tencent's business plan with six versions, and each invested 1.1 million US dollars, provided that the number of registered users of Tencent increased to 4 million by the end of the year. In the first half of 2, Tencent predicted that the number of users would reach 15 million by the end of the year, and then it was revised to 2 million, and soon it was predicted to 4 million again, and then it was not predicted, because there was no way to predict it.

-Later facts show that ICQ regretted giving up the China market of Nuoda. Therefore, ICQ sued OICQ for infringement. Tencent is registered in the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, not afraid! This lawsuit is protracted, and now it seems that there is no time to finish it in three or five years. However, in order to avoid its edge, Tencent secretly changed OICQ into QQ, which is also a nickname given to Tencent OICQ by netizens privately. Renaming can't really change anything. As long as Tencent doesn't have fatal flaws, it's very difficult to compete for Tencent's food.

-Today, most of Tencent's rivals at that time no longer exist. Tencent is the only one specializing in ICQ, and many companies such as Sina, Netease, Sohu and Yahoo share the remaining 5% of the market. As for how to win, all the reasons are very subtle. For example, Tencent has designed colorful avatars with different personalities for users, which are colorful and moving when they are alive, but turn gray when they die; Tencent stores users' friends' information on the server. No matter what machine users change, they can easily find their friends, instead of changing places and finding that the kingdom they have worked hard to build has become empty. These details are like the essence of life: subtle and plain but need careful care.

-Make money

-Technically, Tencent is a follower. However, ICQ does not have any business model for Tencent to refer to. Because ICQ sold to AOL has deep pockets, there is no need to make money from ICQ. ICQ is just a free service provided by AOL for users. But Tencent is different. They are poor.

-advertising on OICQ to make money is the first way Tencent came up with. Tencent is the first in the world to advertise on ICQ. AOL's ICQ followed suit only a few months after Tencent launched its advertisement. Tencent's advertisements are displayed 1 billion times a day and clicked 1 million times a day, which is unimaginable for any website. Advertisers advertise on Tencent on a monthly basis. No one can afford it if it is displayed or clicked. According to the daily click volume and daily display volume, there are media reports that Tencent has become the largest carrier of online advertising in China.

-playing the operator's idea is Tencent's second way. Tencent is the first. COM that has the courage to propose to operate with telecom operator. * * * The same operation means sharing money. Paging station is the first operator to share money with Tencent. Unfortunately, it is one-way. How can the communication between people be one-way? As a result, Tencent found China Mobile again, and mobile companies in different provinces have different attitudes. try every possible way to persuade