Introduction to the article After receiving his master's degree in 2011, Zhang Xiaolong went to work as a programmer in a software development company in Guangzhou and called himself a migrant worker. Here he used his spare time to write code and develop his debut novel. On this day, Zhang Xiaolong was appointed as Vice President of Tencent, specifically responsible for the management of Tencent’s Guangzhou R&D Department.
Tencent has multiple products and thousands of product managers. But so far, apart from Ma Huateng, the only person who has entered the public eye and become a legend is Zhang Xiaolong, who invented WeChat. WeChat was born just over two years ago and currently has more than 100 million registered users covering many countries and regions. It has put a lot of pressure on China's mobile operators, and its old rival Qihoo Zhou Hong admitted that the sum of his products is no better than WeChat. Many netizens even call Zhang Xiaolong the Steve Jobs of China! What kind of awesome man is this? How did he create the myth of youth?
Was a homeless person
Zhang Xiaolong was admitted to the Department of Telecommunications of Huazhong University of Science and Technology from Hunan at the age of 19.
After receiving his master's degree in 2001, Zhang Xiaolong went to work as a programmer in a software development company in Guangzhou and called himself a migrant worker. Here he used his spare time to write code and develop his debut novel.
After Zhang Xiaolong resigned from the company, he became a freelance software writer, which is what people think of as an unemployed vagrant.
One day in 2008, Lei Jun, who had just taken up the position of Kingsoft Software, sent Zhang Xiaolong an email asking Zhang Xiaolong if he was willing to sell to Kingsoft. At this time, Zhang Xiaolong was increasingly overwhelmed by the maintenance, and he was so anxious that he wanted to simply sell it, and the price was only 10,000 yuan.
It is regrettable that Lei Jun was busy with Lenovo’s capital injection at that time and Jinshan’s negotiators believed that Jinshan could do it on its own, but the two sides failed to reach an agreement. Unexpectedly, by 2018, official statistics showed that the total number of Internet-connected computers in China was 10,000, but it had 10,000 users.
Zhang Xiaolong kept improving the software and launching new versions but still couldn't make any money.
During that time, Zhang Xiaolong’s name frequently appeared in the media as a representative figure of the tragic fate of Chinese free software developers. During the most difficult time, he even came up with the idea of going to the United States to work on software. There, a free software developer can earn tens of thousands of dollars or more per month through advertising and donations.
What Zhang Xiaolong never imagined was that in the autumn of that year, the first major turning point in his life came when Boda Software announced its acquisition of 10,000 yuan. In hindsight, it seems that this acquisition was more targeted at Zhang Xiaolong. Zhang Xiaolong later joined Boda as vice president and became a leader among the second generation of programmers in China.
He worked hard to become the vice president of Tencent in 2012
Tencent, an upstart Internet company that just went public shortly after its listing, announced an overall acquisition. Zhang Xiaolong once again became the dowry of his own work and entered Tencent Guangzhou R&D Department to lead the email team to compete with, etc. He is no longer a simple technician but has embarked on a new journey as a product manager.
But Zhang Xiaolong’s journey as a product manager did not go smoothly. Ma Huateng had high hopes for him, but after he took over, he fell into a crazy imitation puzzle. Half a year later, a mailbox product called Big Mac came out, but it was extremely bulky and slow and had almost no operational value.
Zhang Xiaolong spent the next year in loneliness. It is precisely because of this that he has time to stop and put aside the rigid and cold surface of the product to think about how to give the product a living soul.
A turning point came at the end of the year. The mailbox team led by Zhang Xiaolong decided to abandon the previous style of play and create a new version with a streamlined and lightweight approach. In the spring of the following year, the mailbox speed problem was solved and everything went online again, and the number of users began to grow slowly.
Subsequently, Zhang Xiaolong’s application innovations were launched one after another. One of the innovations that has made mailboxes so popular is the ability to send large attachments. Other mailboxes usually can only send left and right attachments, but it expands the capacity to .
By 2018, mailboxes had been revived from a near-death state. Zhang Xiaolong's team was awarded Tencent's seven-star product and also won the company's annual innovation award. According to statistics from his team members, there have been many innovations in mailboxes under Zhang Xiaolong’s leadership. As a product manager, he excels again.
Zhang Xiaolong was appointed as the Vice President of Tencent on 2018-01-08, and was specifically responsible for the management of Tencent's Guangzhou R&D Department. He also participated in the management and review of the company's major innovation projects.
Zhang Xiaolong is already a little less interested in achieving the first place in the country for his mailbox. He once said in an interview that he had entered a state of semi-retirement. The reality is that he physically retired but never stopped thinking for a moment.
As an admirer of Steve Jobs, Zhang Xiaolong continues his endless speculations. He hopes that it does not have a phone function, which can save a lot of phone bills and minimize interruptions. When needed, he can find someone to talk to and have a video chat. In the end, his idea was realized by his WeChat.
The Guangzhou R&D Department won the WeChat project due to Zhang Xiaolong’s acumen. In 2008, he saw the continuous emergence of instant messaging tools such as MiLiao, , and etc. in the field of mobile Internet, so he sent an email to Ma Huateng suggesting that the company should launch a mobile communication tool project. Ma Huateng agreed that the Guangzhou R&D Department would launch it as a research project and name the product WeChat.
Tencent WeChat project was officially launched one month later. According to Zhang Xiaolong’s idea, if everyone can experience free SMS WeChat on mobile phones, it will definitely be accepted by everyone. Therefore, in the WeChat version, he took the lead in launching a text function equivalent to free text messaging, but the novelty for users quickly wore off. Among similar domestic application products, large and small, it is difficult for WeChat to seize the user's mobile phone interface. Under the leadership of Zhang Xiaolong, R&D personnel began to think about how to make products have a soul to satisfy people's growing greed from the head-to-head product level.
Use WeChat to change the lives of hundreds of millions of people
According to Zhang Xiaolong, the first turning point of WeChat is the realization of the intercom function. The second turning point is the release of the function of finding nearby friends. The third turning point is the shake function and The addition of drift bottles.
Zhang Xiaolong said that when WeChat was first launched, no one could imagine its future glory. People think that WeChat is just another copycat product launched by Tencent, which is good at imitating. But by the end of the month, no one thought so. When WeChat launched the function of finding people around you, the growth curve of the number of users showed a steep rise. When you can shake your phone and you can match and chat with people thousands of miles away who are also shaking their phones, WeChat really exploded.
In Zhang Xiaolong’s view, if a product’s function requires a prompt box to tell people how to use it, then the function itself is a failure. The plug-in entry interface set by WeChat only has a vibrating phone. Most people will shake it a few times when they see this interface. As the sound of the rifle sounded, the user's curiosity suddenly aroused. Who was shaking at the same time as him? Of course, the user does not have to establish a relationship with the other party.
Zhang Xiaolong, who is attentive, was worried that shaking would annoy his female friends, but female colleagues revealed that they were actually competing in private to see who could receive the most greetings without feeling disturbed!
Tencent WeChat launches version 1. WeChat users can make video calls. As the spiritual leader of Tencent’s Guangzhou R&D Department, Zhang Xiaolong put forward the slogan that everyone is a product manager. He believed that the most human needs can only be observed through experience. Therefore, an interesting phenomenon occurred in Tencent's Guangzhou R&D Department. Whenever there is a new version of a product or a new feature is launched, developers have to rush to the security guards immediately to let them experience it first.
Zhang Xiaolong’s dedication to products has reached the pixel level. He once asked WeChat’s product manager what changes were made to the conversation list of WeChat and ? No one noticed that the height of each row of the session list was reduced by two pixels, which was difficult to distinguish with the naked eye, but he saw it.
In just over two years since its birth, WeChat has become the dominant software among similar software. Currently, the number of registered users exceeds 100 million, covering many countries and regions. It has put a lot of pressure on China's mobile operators, and its old rival Qihoo Zhou Hong also admitted that the sum of his products is not as good as WeChat. Many netizens even call Zhang Xiaolong the Steve Jobs of China!
Zhang Xiaolong is one of the very few mobile Internet people in China who can project his personal style into products. This is one reason why people like to associate him with Steve Jobs. Another reason is that their characters are equally paranoid, stubborn, pursue perfection, and not very humane.
Zhang Xiaolong is a very protective person. As long as he thinks that using business ideas on his products will affect the user experience, he will stand up like a small animal when he is wary of wild beasts and will not give in at all. When developing products, we often receive a lot of opinions from the company's senior management. He will explain why it cannot be added and why it is inappropriate, and stick to his own ideas. If the other party insists on adding me, he will say that you can add me when I leave Tencent.
Zhang Xiaolong did not respond to criticism of WeChat’s commercialization. His team just made a new decision silently. After the public platform was launched, in order to prevent the proliferation of trolls on Weibo and frequent screen swiping, he stipulated that each account could only broadcast one message per day, even if the account was added through certification for one day. The upper limit is only 1. After discovering that some websites used viral propagation to induce users to spread information, he did not hesitate to cut off the direct reading function of the page in the public account and replaced it with the less convenient WeChat intermediate page. Facing the marketing account that was complaining all day long, he just coldly dropped a sentence on WeChat Moments. From now on, WeChat will be quiet.
WhatsApp
