In the office, Kong Lingyu, Ding Zhenglin and Lin Qingya took turns reporting on work progress.
Kong Lingyu’s recent energy has been focused on the multilingualization of Happy Farm and the development of YY mailboxes, especially Happy Farm. Li Mu regards it as the vanguard of YY’s globalization. Whether this game can attract the love of overseas users, Li Mu will be interested in it. Said it is particularly important.
"Currently, the four language versions of English, Spanish, Japanese, and German have been developed. French, Italian, Arabic and other language versions are still under development and translation, and should be completed within a week."
Li Mu nodded and said: "English, Spanish, Japanese, and German should be able to cover a considerable part of the population, and most of the countries where they are used are developed countries with a high proportion of Internet users. I think we can start our first The first stage of promotion work has been carried out, and the first promotion country in the first stage will be the United States."
Kong Lingyu said: "Boss, my business and investment colleagues have registered company shells wholly owned by Makino Technology in many countries. Should we promote the game alone at the beginning, or together with YY?"
Li Mu said without hesitation: "Single push games, YY is a social software. The cost for social software users to change products is too high. Blind promotion will definitely not increase the conversion rate. It is not suitable for overseas promotion at the moment. In addition, Users in Europe and the United States will definitely have a certain resistance to software from developing countries, especially social software. It is difficult to get them to give up MSN and ICQ. It is very difficult to get them to give up these two software and switch to using It’s even more difficult for a software from China, so we can’t put too heavy a psychological burden on them at the beginning and use pure games to attract their attention first.”
The three of them were a little confused, and Kong Lingyu asked: "Are there any feelings of resistance to China's local software in the hearts of users in the American market?"
Li Mu said firmly: "There must be, because for the U.S. Internet market, they are exporters of software and hardware, industry standards, and solutions. In other words, almost all standards and rules related to computers, the Internet, and the Internet are They have determined that most of the Internet products and business models are developed by them and exported to the world. At this time, if there is a developing country that wants to export software to them in turn, it will be very difficult in most cases. Advancing.”
As he spoke, Li Mu thought of his technology master Fang Xudong, and hurriedly asked Lin Qingya: "Is Xudong at Makino Technology today?"
"Here we are." Lin Qingya said, "The R&D teams of several major projects work here."
Li Mu hurriedly said: "Find Xudong, no one among us here knows the American Internet market better than him."
Fang Xudong was quickly found. When Li Mu repeated Kong Lingyu's question to him, he answered very firmly: "The exclusivity phenomenon in the U.S. Internet market is too strong. Not only China, but also very few Internet products from other countries can Establish a foothold in the U.S. market.”
After a pause, Fang Xudong added: "Right now, the Internet products and models in China and even other countries around the world basically come from the United States. Putting aside hardware, in terms of software products, the United States exports Windows, OS, Linux, etc. to the world. The computer operating system also exported the fundamental core product of the 'Internet'."
Li Mu also agreed with Fang Xudong's statement.
It’s not that he has any admiration for the United States. The key is that the United States is indeed the founder of the Internet industry, as well as the creator of industry standards and business models.
Whether it is instant messaging, social communication, e-commerce, search engines, or even various functional software, almost all of them were born in the United States, and then gradually exported to the world, and finally were developed by local Internet companies. Based on local optimization, under this background, now, and even in the next ten years, no Huaxia software product can really affect and cover American users. The only impact is that a large number of Huaxia Internet companies have invested in NASDAQ. It's just listed on the market.
WeChat has developed so well in later generations, but if you really look at it on a global scale, when it expanded overseas, there were already very strong competing products in the overseas market. The overseas market in the same field has always been divided into two parts, WhatsApp and Facebook. -Messenger is the two dominant players in the world. WeChat is so powerful and ecologically complete that it cannot be pushed even in the third world, let alone developed countries.
Therefore, Li Mu does not dare to directly launch YY now, because once he blindly launches YY into the developed market without adequate preparation, as long as YY is cold at the beginning, it will be even more difficult to do so later. It’s useless even if YY’s products are much better than MSN and ICQ. If the first round is cold and the second round is not ready, the local competing products will improve for you. Once the other party If local players catch up in terms of functionality, it will be even more impossible for YY to make a comeback.
What's more, the nature of instant messaging software is sensitive. For users in the US market, an instant messaging software from China will instinctively feel that it is not more reliable and reliable than using local software. If you directly promote YY, the conversion rate will be extremely low.
Kong Lingyu asked Li Mu: "Boss, what do you mean, first use Happy Farm to accumulate users, and then migrate the users to YY, just like when we competed with QQ?"
Li Mu said: "Yes and no, the overseas market is more complex, and our controllable range is originally lower than that in China. Simply using Happy Farm to support users is far from enough. What I want to do is to hide our capabilities, bide our time, and focus on business in overseas markets first. and elites, and develop some functions for them that can become their immediate needs.”
Kong Lingyu asked subconsciously: "Are you talking about a tool software like Foxmail?"
Kong Lingyu's mention of Foxmail made Li Mu's eyes light up. He slapped the table and blurted out: "That's right! The positioning is like Foxmail, but it is definitely not a separate tool software, but should be integrated into one of our future versions. In YY."
Foxmail can be said to be the only tool software in China that has a large number of users around the world. There are several essential factors for the success of this software.
First of all, the product is really great, and the software as a whole is lightweight. For users who need to send and receive emails, such a software can bring great convenience to them. By word of mouth, users can save a lot of energy for publicity and promotion. ;
Secondly, this product is very targeted. Most ordinary users are not the target of its service. It has been targeting vertical Internet practitioners and business people who often use the Internet to work from the beginning. However, this is such a highly vertical product positioning. , can cultivate highly loyal users. Ordinary users will not log in to their mailbox and send an email every few months, but vertical users may send and receive several or even dozens of emails every day. The stickiness of the latter is beyond imagination;
Finally, the name of Foxmail is well chosen. For such a software, if its English version is thrown into overseas application markets and download websites, users will not regard it as a software from China, which can minimize the user's frustration. Guard against psychology to increase conversion rates.
Compared with Foxmail, the English name of WeChat is Wechat. Because it is also a product created by Zhang Xiaolong, the naming of the English version of WeChat is also very consistent with Zhang Xiaolong’s routine. However, unlike Foxmail, WeChat’s user base is too broad, and in overseas markets It is impossible to find truly highly vertical users. The only vertical overseas user group is probably those users who often have contact with Chinese people. They will become WeChat users out of necessity, but they only position WeChat as a "specifically related to Chinese users". It is a vertical tool for "people chatting" and does not really regard it as its main social communication software, which is very embarrassing.
Li Muyin went to WeChat and chatted with a few people about his views on Foxmail. Kong Lingyu and Fang Xudong, two real Internet technicians, both recognized Li Mu's analysis. Although Lin Qingya and Ding Zhenglin didn't understand it very well, they were confused. I also think what Li Mu said makes sense.
Afterwards, Li Mu revealed his true strategic plan.
“Happy Farm will warm up first and truly launch YY. We must first focus on business people and moderate and intensive Internet users. In other words, we must integrate some products into our products that can cater to these special groups of users. For the functions that are just needed, we will first capture these users, and then combine them with our farms, games and other ecological products to attract shallow Internet users."
Fang Xudong asked subconsciously: "Mr. Li, what product functions have you prepared for business people and medium and advanced Internet users?"
Li Mu said: "There are several. The first one is the group audio and video call function. In the future, business people and group users will have very strong demand for this function. Your solution has basically been developed, right?"
Fang Xudong nodded: "Basically, it's almost the same. Our solution can reduce bandwidth usage by 3-40% without reducing the quality of audio and video calls. At the same time, the stability will be greatly improved on the existing basis. There is no big problem in dealing with group audio and video communication, and this technology should be the best solution in the industry."
Li Muchao: "OK, the second one is the file transfer function. First of all, our file transfer protocol must be fast, stable and support resumed downloads. If the acquisition of FlashGet is completed, we can build it into an embedded functional component. Let it better support uploading, downloading and resuming uploads during file transfer."
Ding Zhenglin said hurriedly: "I have almost completed the communication with Hou Yantang. I will report the specific details to you later. I am more than 90% sure that the acquisition will be successful."
Li Mu said with satisfaction: "That's the best, but FlashGet can only solve half of this requirement. I have another requirement for the file transfer function—offline transfer."
"Offline transfer?"
(End of chapter)