As bearing most of the old Internet memories of the tianya forum, now already no longer scenery, and looking at the end of the world step by step fall, Internet people more just helpless and regret. Once tianya, it is the label of the early Internet era…
Weathered, but the end of the world into “reduced people”
In 1999, amid the boom of Internet community forums, xing Ming, a stock enthusiast, set up the first community stock forum on his local web portal. In the early stage of tianya’s launch, it coincides with the change of Sitong Lifang to Sina.com and makes adjustments in its positioning, which no longer involves the forum area, so tianya has received a large number of elite netizens who are accustomed to the forum mode. Most of these netizens are intellectuals from universities, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Xinhua News Agency and other institutions with high intellectual and cultural literacy who were the first to access the Internet in China. It is these people who have forged the gene of tianya’s high-end atmosphere with their influence. From the initial establishment of the stock forum, to the content of a diversified community forum, Tianya in the early days of the Internet can be said to be the wind and water.
After gaining a large number of high-end users, Tianya began to cast a wide net to attract more content – focused users, and thus ushered in the era of IP literature: Excellent IP literature works such as Ghost Blows out the Light and Roll Over Mr. Tumor have long been associated with Tianya. Driven by high-quality content and simple forum page design, Tianya community has established itself as the cornerstone of a high-quality forum for Chinese people around the world. In the establishment of the year, ning god of wealth of a “tianya this rotten place”, true words to express their deep love to the end of the world, the end of the world is also in this year was rated as the year “the most humane community.” In addition, with the continuous packaging and promotion of numerous high-end media such as Tianya and Southern Weekend, tianya community has become a well-known community platform on the Internet.
In addition to excellent IP literature works, Tianya forum also provides a platform for users to ridicule. Compared to a circle of friends now, weibo and other social software, in there are relatives, friends, colleagues and even your boss, poking fun at also can no longer follow one’s inclinations, and given priority to with strangers BBS makes most people brazenly jokes, communication, good place to release the pressure, and after the end of the world famous online book “war”, Tianya has become the major livelihood, entertainment, political affairs and other news media primary stakeout point, the tianya scenery at that time.
But unfortunately, with the accumulation of the Internet economic bubble in the early 21st century, most of the Domestic Internet enterprises did not survive the painful and long road of realizing profits before the rise of Internet advertising, and eventually reduced to the end of forced transformation or closing acquisition. And the end of the world to stick to his beginner’s mind, did not take any measure, spent winter successfully through controlling cost only, but the practice of this one cheat also buried no small curse for its however.
It is not a small problem that can be solved overnight. After the cold winter, tianya’s shortage of funds is still not solved, so tianya is forced to reduce capital investment through layoffs. For Internet enterprises, the shortage of technology and content personnel is undoubtedly the most fatal blow. The end of the world also therefore in the winter just after winter again, gradually walked on the road of decline.
In the Internet era, the fate of community forums
Once upon a time, tianya, MAO pu and Sina, it can be said is the Internet community times of the three giants, tianya is in the sifang Litong (the former sina community predecessor) of the fire below the potential established, and coincides with the strategic adjustment of sifang Litong, tianya has obtained a large number of talent resources. As a vertical subdivision field, Mop.com let people know the power of community human flesh search with its famous “cat abuse incident”. After Sina.com gradually faded out of the community, mop.com shared the world with Tianya, enjoying the saying that “foreign affairs ask tianya, internal affairs find Mop.com”. And once the three communities in the winter after the successful transformation of Sina, MAO pu in the winter of many attempts to transition failed, tianya alone is guarding the gradual decline of user flow struggling in the market on the road.
So are community forums really inappropriate for this new Internet age? Actually not necessarily, in the Internet era of rapid development, a lot of community business group also in constant after winter bud, such as zhihu, tiger flapping, watercress in the field of vertical online q&a is community nova night rise, and enduring of ridicule community such as baidu post are symbols of the Internet community is still in the spring.
Looking abroad, social news site Reddit closed a $200 million venture capital round in early August at a valuation of nearly $1.8 billion. Reddit, known as tianya in the United States, was founded in 2005 and has achieved remarkable performance in recent years. The website has more than 30 million news items, 37 billion page views and more than 40 million unique visitors, making it the most popular social news site in the United States and standing firm in the field of community websites. Community remains an indispensable force in the content-driven Internet age.
And in contrast, the end of the world, it has been to content as the core competitiveness, although has been trying to optimize mining mechanism of high quality content, but as the mainly content of community website, the optimization of mining on the content is only the first step, how to realized high quality content, let the end of the world and the author to achieve win-win situation, is the direction of the end of the world’s most the attention.
However, the result is that tianya in the early accumulation of strong content production capacity support, relying on its own huge flow to cultivate a batch of popular IP, since then began to decline, and there is no follow-up high quality popular IP cash profit mechanism, the outside world feel tianya some pretentious. In addition, as the film and television publishing and game company began to skip the platform directly cooperate with the author, the end of the world develop critical red authors are left under the interests, have such a strong IP repository, but I did not enjoy the IP dividends, the cultivation of the tianya results according to the author with the third party is on the table, “the only chip.
With the opening of the Internet, community culture is also suffering from the impact of foreign vulgar and inferior culture. From the regional blackmailing, flooding and various gate incidents of Tianya.com, tianya was ordered to rectify due to pornography, and the negative content of racism, sexism and cyber bullying on Reddit, community culture has been invaded by vulgar culture. The inaction of the platform makes many opinion leaders of community websites flee one after another, and the living environment of community enterprises has become the primary reason for their platforms to be criticized by many people.
Tianya decline below the lesson, giant enterprise how to survive
In the increasingly difficult atmosphere of survival, more entrepreneurs began to reflect: what kind of soil is suitable for the survival of Internet content enterprises?
From the relatively successful community websites at home and abroad and even large Internet giants, it is not difficult to find that there are several necessary conditions for successful entrepreneurship on the Internet.
The first is core technology. As a product of the era of science and technology, the innovation and development of the Internet is inseparable from technology, and Internet enterprises should take the construction of technical team as the core, whether in website construction or content promotion, technology is the top priority. For example, Internet giant Baidu relies on AI technology to build its own future AI team, while Tianya is too focused on traditional media and lacks technical genes. Without the support of technology, tianya’s invariable and rarely innovative mode soon became an excuse for its team and users to comfort themselves under the banner of feelings.
Second is content management. In addition to providing services for diversified market demands, Internet enterprises also need to build independent brands with their own characteristics and take KOL as the core in content management. Zhihu, Toutiao and Douban group all rely heavily on content output. Douban reflects the distinctive culture of its community through its unique themes, while Zhihu and Toutiao have many senior BIG V q&A teams and excellent writers.
However, as a product of the PC era, the response of the forum in the mobile Internet transformation is also quite slow, which is related to the “heavy content” carried by itself. In the past, community users spent a lot of time in writing posts, reading posts and responding to posts when browsing forums on the PC terminal, but the “fast culture” on the mobile terminal was difficult to meet such time demands, and the forum thus seemed to be incompatible with this era of information fragmentation. However, it is not as free as blog in expression, not as efficient as Weibo in information transmission, and not as convenient as QQ and wechat in social communication. Now there are only feelings left, and fewer and fewer people are willing to pay for these feelings.
In addition, the founders of Internet enterprises need to have a long-term strategic vision, take advantage of traffic as soon as possible, realize commercialization and market value as soon as possible, and reduce financial pressure from financing. On the contrary, Xing Ming, in the early with 20 million strong independent funds, but he rarely consider the future of the problem, in the tianya’s most prosperous period had an average of 20 million user flow, but the tianya did not seize this wave of early precious flow dividend, missed the listing opportunity again and again.
And finally, geography. Tianya’s headquarters was set up in Hainan. After tianya’s early success, the team had the opportunity to move its headquarters to Beijing, but they decided that Beijing was too fickle and not suitable for the cultivation of talents in the community. In contrast, most Of today’s Internet enterprises are inseparable from first-tier cities, which not only appeal for talents such as technology and operation, but also the depth of the atmosphere into the industry. Now, Tianya Building standing in Hainan is virtually empty and has lost its market competitiveness.
In a word, in the ever-changing Internet era, Internet enterprises can survive only by constantly driving themselves forward and innovating. Ever regard the tianya of era label as nowadays with too much tuyere miss, but also have to say everything is possible, the influence of the tianya still exists now, whether the tianya is likely to rely on the financial group actual strength of backside to hit a turn over one’s life, wait for time to give an answer even.
Liu Kuang, meditation on the Internet, wechat official account: Liukuang110