Ding Lei: There is no technical content in fighting to burn money at the speed of Netease is walking a path that no one has taken

He said that money can indeed make people live comfortably, but knowledge can make people live with more dignity, which money cannot compare. "Export knowledge and live with dignity. This is actually a bit high and simple,"Ding Lei waved his hand," but we have to take this path that no one has taken."

Hearing Ding Lei's voice, I was reading "What Interesting Stories Ding Lei Has" on Zhihu. Once, Ding Lei traveled by car and came to a northwest town with a population of only 200,000. After walking around, he was a little disappointed."There are no bookstores or newsstands in this city." Ding Lei is a person who believes in "technology changes the future, and knowledge changes the heart." He has a strong thirst for knowledge, reads a variety of books, and pays attention to the future direction and impact of innovation. The knowledge structure accumulated over the years has been internalized into personal cultivation. He always keeps a smile and is good at listening to other people's thoughts. He said that money can indeed make people live comfortably, but knowledge can make people live with more dignity, which money cannot compare. "Export knowledge and live with dignity. This is actually a bit high and simple,"Ding Lei waved his hand," but we have to take this path that no one has taken."

Ding Lei's Choice

Netease's Shanghai office does not have Ding Lei's dedicated office. He likes to be free and alone, without a follower. He had a vague feeling of being at ease and at ease with this disputed Jianghu. This allowed him to remain independent and calm amid several bubble-like waves of business. He doesn't like to join in the fun and likes to specialize in product research. He thinks this is the foundation of Netease's foothold. The DNA he instilled in Netease was,"Consumers like it."

Ding Lei did make many of the products he envisioned. Some make blood for Netease, and some make Netease famous. Ding Lei has always had one insistence deep in his heart: to discover and export "innovative content." This is in line with the essence of business innovation."Netease is more like a company doing content industry. We have a complete industrial chain to supply us with content." Netease News, Youdao Dictionary, Netease Open Classes, Netease Cloud Music, Netease Cloud Reading, etc. have all become embodiments of Netease's values.

Ding Lei has always had a strong interest in content products. Netease media platform embodies his rational choices and ideals, especially at a time when content entrepreneurship is booming. When the BAT giant swept the Internet, Ding Lei said,"Everyone's models are different. Ali and Baidu are still traffic models, and Netease is a content provider." He has been committed to building Netease News into a content platform with attitude.

When proposing "attitudinal" content orientation, there was a lot of controversy. The outside world does not seem to understand the profound meaning behind Ding Lei: on the basis of respecting the facts, we report and interpret the incident in depth and from multiple angles."We have an attitude that is more of an independent attitude at the ideological level." As a result, Netease News has created a unique follow-up culture that "inspires everyone to think.""We have cultivated and gathered a group of independent attitudes and independent thinking people in Netease News."

Ding Lei did it himself. He joined Netease News's business discussion group, often discussing practical issues such as topic selection directions and interview skills with front-line employees. He also recommended high-end financial management media in the group, such as Harvard Business Review and Wharton Business. After having enough attention and understanding of these more traditional content platforms, he will also invite them to join Netease to form a high-quality resource circle.

Ding Lei has a keen sense of control over content."For example, I may sit down and observe what topic everyone has been talking about recently and why they are talking about this topic." He paid attention to the matter of "Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia competing for resources, causing the drying up of China's largest desert freshwater lake" and arranged a review and planning article before it attracted the attention of the whole society. There were nearly 100,000 followers under this article. He often pays attention to such national economy and people's livelihood issues.

"The core of the content industry is still a creative industry." Ding Lei believes. "Including what Wu Xiaobo is doing, it is actually creative industries. Because he needs exclusive data and unique perspectives to analyze and prove his views." In Ding Lei's view, Netease News wants to build such a content platform. Here,"Every creator does not need to milk cows twice a day like milking cows. He may only write two articles a month to ensure his opinions are valuable and attractive."

Ding Lei cares about the content value that Netease News outputs to users as an influential platform. His interest is not to be an information distribution platform, but to "encourage and create information." He believes that if Netease News is regarded as a cake, then the huge amount of distribution information is the base material of a cake, and Netease's high-quality native content is the cream on the cake.

Ecological influence

cream is the icing on the cake, but it is the soul of a cake called cake. The soul of Netease's content platform is Ding Lei's spontaneous business awareness: using knowledge to change the perceptions of more and more people. He himself likes popular science knowledge and encourages Netease to use "new knowledge" as the first priority factor in communication."It is a bit high and low","But the path we are going to take today is definitely something many people have not taken, and I have never taken before.","We should focus on some essential things."

Behind concentration is enough patience and perseverance. Ding Lei is unwilling to do things that compete with the speed of burning money."These are not technical." He actively cultivates Netease's corporate culture and allows Netease employees to generate collective cultural awareness."Recognize innovation and respect knowledge. Every innovation in science and technology is changing and affecting us. We should regard this kind of behavior as our highest standard, and only under this value can we maintain our sense of hunger and innovative attitude and spirit."

Focusing on the cognitive origin, from the integration of two micro-terminals in 2015 to the internal structural adjustment in 2016, innovations such as Netease, internal original content studio, mobile pan-information live broadcast, and "media partner" model have jointly built the Netease information ecosystem platform. Whether it is from content production, distribution, marketing, or consumer terminals, the efficiency of the entire system has been greatly improved.

This platform, like Ding Lei's habits, does not blindly pursue "fast" and so-called time windows. Ding Lei said that Netease's products must have two characteristics. One is to be innovative compared with competitors 'products; the other is that in the process of making products, every detail must be refined and refined, and there must be a craftsman spirit.

Ding Lei estimated the number of people directly affected by Netease's content products."Netease News, Youdao Dictionary, Cloud Reading, Cloud Music, each product affects tens of millions of people every day." He does not pursue the expansion of content too much, but requires "influencing those who should be influenced."

On a more ambitious issue, the Netease ecosystem platform wants to influence and change people's cognitive path of life, self, and the world. For example, Netease's open classes have 5000 courses covering more than 20 fields, with more than 10 million yuan invested every year."There must be many people, because after opening open classes, it will have a lifelong impact on them, such as understanding of happiness, understanding of a certain knowledge, etc." Ding Lei's personal experience is that his father is an engineer in a scientific research institution, and his understanding of science has cultivated his interest."I really need this kind of enlightenment."

Ding Lei's self-perception formation has a crucial impact on Netease Media's character and future. They are each other inside and outside and achieve each other. This is probably symbiosis.

Editor: Nancy