Zhou: How to create a successful internet product

Wen/Zhou (Chairman Qihoo)

In the field of Internet entrepreneurship more and more, but how to create a successful Internet products, has been the misunderstanding of understanding, but also plagued many entrepreneurs.

From my personal years of practice, I think the Internet products have a few easily overlooked characteristics: first, the Internet products to have a soul, to meet the relevant areas of the rules of the game, can impress the hearts of users. If this is not done well, the appearance of the product is gorgeous, the interface again beautiful, backstage again strong, also difficult to succeed. Impress the user's heart, this seems to be nonsense, but also the most simple, many products are not really meet the needs of users, but in the invention or fantasy user needs, and even reverse the user needs in doing. Like many SNS sites in the country imitate Facebook, although very similar, but not very successful.

Second, the Internet products need continuous operation, continuous grinding, good products are operating out, not developed. and the traditional hardware and software products have a materialization of the carrier, it is impossible to constantly change, more stable. The essence of Internet products is service, is through some form of bridges and windows to the service to the user, because the user's needs constantly changing, the product will be adjusted at any time. Microsoft's Windows XP was relatively successful in the early years, because in the traditional software era, users need not much, manufacturers can easily understand; in the internet era, behind closed doors to the inevitable failure of Vista, user demand changes too quickly, manufacturers are not sure.

Like Google all the products, every time there will be a small change, this is the idea of Internet products: products must be people to use, and constantly based on user feedback to amend. Now a lot of people are talking about "customer and market-centric", but in fact, "company-centric". This starting point is bound to determine the outcome of failure.

I think that my client's seniority is deeper than the horse, but if you really do an IM product, in product details and technology may be better than he did, but it is difficult than his success. We are not the same background, I do traditional software origin, and Tencent's entrepreneurial team is from doing paging out of the run, before the service, this gave Ma a lot of help. It was a watershed, and Ma had mastered the rules of Internet products early on, and made it a service to continue to improve.

Whether you think it or not, I don't think it's as smart as the user's choice. With any idea, do not expect to be perfect again to the market, as a simple to make a little bit, to get the market to do the experiment, once the right to follow up quickly, once the wrong, the cost of adjustment is very low. The user as a touchstone, set small wins for the victory. Tencent is very successful today, its business model is a horse to make a day to come out? Certainly not, initially is a simple chat tool, touched the user's friend demand.

If you have mastered the rules of Internet products, you may not need too many people, as long as the target user's demand point, at the same time in the technology development, the use of "small steps run, step-by-step, constantly try and error" thinking, I think there may be more than large companies.