Youdao Breakthrough: Search under the "egg"

Kill Baidu, is about most of the search technology to learn the dream of it men, Zhou Feng is no exception, at least this is his first dream of entrepreneurship.

Zhou Feng and NetEase founder Ding Lei met in 2004. At that time, Zhou Feng also studied for his doctorate at the University of Berkeley. Ding lei in the search to prevent spam methods, read foreign related papers when the Zhou Feng's paper, after the two people collaborated to develop some password authentication system.

2005, Zhou Feng in Ding Lei's encouragement to return home to create NetEase Youdao, the main page search products. Baidu was just listed on the Nasdaq, and the search market showed huge business prospects. "We have always felt that the search for this product has not been particularly good. "The simplest problem we saw at the time was the Zhou Feng of search." In addition, search has not been intelligent enough, the information provided is too messy. So we try to do a lot of things to solve these problems. ”

At that time in the outside world, ding lei in order to retain Zhou Feng, allow him in netease internal independent entrepreneurship, and provide a large number of human and material support; There are media reports, at that time NetEase's investment in the search is particularly large, conservative estimated that a year may have billions.

But the story that came from behind did not happen as scheduled, replaced by the unintentional play. 2012, NetEase Youdao Company's income of about 100 million yuan, and created NetEase in the mobile Internet users the largest client-Youdao dictionary, as of June 2013, NetEase Youdao Dictionary (desktop version + mobile version) User volume of more than 350 million. Last year, Zhou Feng in the company's new positioning, in his view, Youdao is now a large data technology to do mobile internet media companies, the main source of profit is advertising revenue.

This time he wants Youdao to become a big data age of the first hair.

Search the eggs under

The search business failed, and Zhou Feng it down to time.

"Our goal at first was to do web search." At the same time we are in the first version of the online when the search product line must not have only one web search, so no way to let users remember, so we also need to have other differences in things. People wanted to use technology to combine the current trends in some industries, such as blogs. "One of the founders of the Youdao, Bauta said, as Zhou Feng's brother, Bauta in the Zhou Feng influence and encourage also joined the Youdao entrepreneurial team." Therefore, Youdao team began to explore the vertical search domain transformation, including Youdao reading, blog search, shopping search and other subdivision areas.

Soon after, Zhou Feng realised that without a disruptive innovation in technology or business models, it would be difficult to move the user's search behavior, which meant that the chances of defeating Baidu were extremely low. "For the first few years, we actually did a lot of trying on the product line," he said. Many of the search criteria that are now seen, such as search box hints, are standard. "Bauta said. But for internet companies, similar micro-innovation is difficult to achieve large-scale user migration. "Unless you can make the user clearly aware of the changes, he also has learning costs for users." ”

Youdao has tried in the blog, News, maps, platforms and online shopping and other fields, to achieve vertical search breakthrough, but have encountered micro-innovation bottlenecks, "did a period of time we began to feel that more than half of the research into the search product price is not so high." Bauta recalls.

Make Zhou Feng and Bauta unexpectedly is, the dictionary this looks very unpopular business became Youdao the most dynamic project. The dictionary project, originally called Dictionary search, is just a product that Bauta and several other young people have done to solve the problem of having too little online dictionary vocabulary.

Youdao dictionaries are becoming more and more popular with users, "the growth of its user volume is very different from the other search products we do." Bauta said that when the dictionary first came on line in the third part of the entrance, only the Web page version without a desktop version, did not do a separate promotion.

At the end of 2007, web version of the dictionary users soared, Youdao released the first edition of PC clients. "The client is a very viscous product, once the user put it on their own desktop," Bauta said, the dictionary of the client compared to web search to bring more users, and users of the product stickiness is stronger. In early 2009, the dictionary released its first mobile version. Later we often joked that Youdao dictionary can have today, all rely on Ding lei to take us to buy a Nokia E71. Bauta smiled.

Five years, Youdao dictionary occupies more than 50% of the market share, the monthly active users reached 50 million, daily active users more than 10 million. Youdao Given the data show, Youdao Dictionary Mobile end of the installed capacity is about twice times the PC side, is expected to break through 200 million soon. and user volume 120 million netease news client together, Youdao dictionary let NetEase catch up with mobile internet ship.

Emerging Strategies

The unintentional insertion of the dictionary has changed the direction and path of Youdao, and a new strategic orientation has emerged naturally with the advent of dictionary users. Zhou Feng A new interpretation of the company, which was founded 8 years ago, "We think the Youdao is now a company that uses large data technology to do mobile internet media." ”

Search engine companies need a deep technical reserve for data storage and processing, Zhou Feng at Berkeley, where Zhou Feng and a small team have used distributed architectures to manage and distribute thousands of computer resources at a time when the concept of cloud computing has not yet been created. Although, and not in the web search business, but the Youdao gathered a batch of data processing personnel.

"The overall competitiveness of the dictionary is based on data mining", Zhou Feng the success of dictionary products to large data thinking and methodologies. Youdao beyond PowerWord The key is that users can query a large number of new words and proper nouns. According to the statistics of Zhou Feng, about half of the vocabulary that users query on the Internet is not found in the traditional paper dictionaries. Many times the user is not looking for a traditional English word, such as a company name. "We solve this problem by going to the Internet to find all the Web pages and related content, and through data screening possible explanations." "Zhou Feng said. Youdao in fact is to make the machine dictionary, so that users can find a 90% or 95% he is looking for information tools.

2012, the Youdao began to use open source technology, "this will be more comprehensive, there are a lot of things can be done, such as we do translation, translation system is still our own doing, but data preparation and so on can use some open source resources." "Zhou Feng said. In the field of professional translation, beginnings organizes the fragmented translation productivity and uses the Internet for more efficient and rational use, in an attempt to establish "Amazon in the translation industry". Youdao Professional translation online more than a year, has nearly thousands of translators, the cumulative customer more than 50,000 people, the monthly income of more than million. In Bauta's view, the domestic translation market is a large plate of nearly 30 billion.

As Youdao dictionaries and cloud notes search for "derivative" products to absorb more and more users, Zhou Feng and his team decided to lock in the direction of product development to "knowledge and efficiency", precisely based on mobile Internet knowledge-based/efficiency products.

"The development of new products, in fact, the logic is constantly changing, knowledge and efficiency is we want to give users the impression of the brand left." If you classify the entire mobile Internet application, then all Chinese products can be divided into two categories: entertainment and non-entertainment. "In Zhou Feng's view, the use of white-collar and high-value users as the main body to address their work or the actual needs of life is more imaginative in the long run." "We want our user population to be white-collar and student groups." Because they are more and more mobile, more and more specialized. ”

On the basis of the user's rigid demand, Youdao plans to develop the dictionary product into a platform-level application, not only hunt those who have high value users with translation needs, but also constructs a link around the user translation and learning English-related needs of the ecological chain.

The way to profit depends on advertising revenue, including the brand in the dictionary content of implantable marketing and general-purpose digital advertising input. The latter is a combination of accurate advertising and scene marketing that match the words and translation content, combining the search terms and translation needs of people on smartphones. "The simplest way to do this is, of course, advertising, the advantage of advertising is that it is very adaptable and all places can advertise." "There are more valuable opportunities for value-added services in some vertical areas," Zhou Feng said. For example, we are now doing artificial translation services, through the Internet to do artificial translation services. According to Zhou Feng revealed that the past year, Youdao overall income around 100 million yuan, of which 90% from advertising revenue. Now the company is pinning its hopes on the explosive growth of mobile internet advertising.

Don't look too late.

Youdao in the entrepreneurial building in the most northwest corner of Tsinghua Science and Technology Park, near the neighbor is Sohu and Google China. Into the Youdao company, they can see their slogan is still "NetEase's search." But for the search business, Zhou Feng thinks, "We're all searching for products, and we're going to do some improvement and maintenance." But we think the company's future is on the mobile internet side, so all of our technologies will be used in search products as well as in notes, dictionaries and translations of these products. ”

But web search, Youdao dictionary, Youdao Cloud notes, and based on the original shopping search and shopping assistant integrated into the Youdao Huihui and other products, are not active in the higher social, news and gaming areas of the product. For social Solomo (that is, social "social" + localized "local" + moving "mobile"), Zhou Feng says the future will also take into account similar features in the cloud notes, such as small-scope sharing and so on.

"Small-circle collaboration can be a very worthwhile place to dig, because we often talk about socializing, or media, like microblogs, or communications, or micro-letters." In fact, the process of making people actually do things can make social functions a collaborative approach, I think it is also very valuable. ”

From the initial group of less than 10 people to the present, Youdao has nearly 500 employees. How to lean entrepreneurship, Zhou Feng Now more familiar, he began to use the idea of lean entrepreneurship to drive internal product development. In the user and product design, ding Lei is still often 11 o'clock at night to send text messages to Zhou Feng, talk about Youdao specific product features. Sometimes they talk to 3 o'clock in the morning. Zhou Feng revealed that in fact, two people in 2009 to talk about good business on the phone. All along, Ding Lei will be NetEase's product line planning for the four major product lines: information, entertainment, education and tools, Youdao the company's products involved in the latter two plates, and in the profit model, Zhou Feng that the future mobile phones will make more money than the PC, "This should not be very distant things." I still have to see this earlier, sometimes it is troublesome to watch late.