In December 2020, "Neijuan" was selected as one of the top ten popular words in 2020 by "Zhen Wen Che Zi".
This vocabulary, which originated from a few photos of college students, prompts people to reflect on irrational internal competition. Later, a discussion about "involution" swept all walks of life. Among them, the Internet industry surrounded by keywords such as 996 and sudden death undoubtedly became the focus.
This industry seems to have fallen into a "black hole" competition. The black hole itself does not emit light, but the surrounding area shines brightly because of the torn material. Isn't it because the rapid development of the Internet industry has "eaten" everything around it?
"A black hole is supposed to be a vibrant monster, but the monster at the center of our galaxy is almost dead," said astrophysicist Jeffrey Bauer. The involution of the Internet is getting bigger and bigger and “dead”.
Is involution really inevitable? Is the Internet really trapped in a black hole and cannot escape?
Rolling internet
As of June 2020, the number of Internet users in my country has reached 940 million, equivalent to one-fifth of the global Internet users. The strong population base and demand has given birth to Internet giants such as Tencent, Ali, Baidu, Bytedance, Pinduoduo, Meituan, and JD.com.
In addition to rising GMV and revenue figures, Internet companies also feel a sense of powerlessness from the inside out. Over the years, 996 has become the universal language of the Internet industry, and now, under the leadership of Internet upstarts such as Toutiao and Kuaishou, "big and small weeks" have gradually become the new normal.
According to media reports, from January 10, 2021, all members of Kuaishou will start a large and small week, working 6 days a week and 5 days a week, alternately. "Now there are 70% of the company's people in the big and small weeks. In order to make the front, middle and back offices work more closely, Kuaishou will start all the staff and the big week." This caliber of Kuaishou is simply an "introduction declaration."
In the past, Internet growth mainly benefited from traffic dividends. The innovation was mainly model innovation. Although there are also technologically original companies such as Douyin, the Internet industry in general has grown but no development. In the end, the pressure is transmitted to the enterprise and internal Individually.
"If you don't work overtime, others will progress faster than you every month, and your market share will fall." Involvement on the Internet is so real and realistic-the giants and upstarts, let alone those small and medium-sized Enterprises, the pressure is transmitted layer by layer, and in the end, one enterprise can only squeeze another enterprise, and the entire industry is in involution.
In fact, the involution of the Internet is not just a mortal version of the "arms race", it is also the "prisoner's dilemma" of every Internet company, and ultimately it is still a "black hole" of competition. So, what is the essence of involution? Can the Internet fundamentally get rid of involution?
Capital out of control and only number theory
The current involution of the Internet seems to have long been doomed, and it has long foreseen.
With the help of traffic dividends, China's Internet has been taking a road to "getting rich" with the help of capital: quickly grabbing the market with low or even free strategies, and gaining profits after expanding the market and even monopolizing. After going through such a path, the industries that have fought subsidy wars such as takeaway, shared travel, and shared bicycles finally realized the market segmentation of two or three companies.
But capital sometimes shows its fangs. The Mobike shareholders meeting in April 2018 became a historic scene in China’s Internet. This meeting about the future existence and direction of Mobike should have been quite confidential, but the entire scene was like a live broadcast at any time. News leaked, management and investment The contradiction between the parties was brought to light.
"Now there is no way, investment institutions have their own judgment," the Mobike executive at the time said. Judging from the subsequent merger results, it is indeed behind the transaction that investment institutions are in control of the overall situation.
This capital-led development model determines the natural "involution" in the development of the Internet: to develop, you must obtain capital support, but you need to face "out of control" after entering the capital game field.
In the end, this "out of control" was amplified, making the Chinese Internet what it is now. In the e-commerce industry, the annual Double Eleven is a time when stock prices fluctuate sharply.
The double eleven that came out of the game has become a higher-than-said "call" by the anchors in recent years, one by one, boring, boring and less and less value connotation, but it is indeed what the capital market likes. It's just that behind the steadily rising numbers and the compliment of the angles, the entire industry inevitably moves towards involution and the sacrifice of some individuals.
Another path
Since internal scrolling is mainly dominated by capital, the way to withdraw from internal scrolling must also be capital-related.
As the earliest listed B2C e-commerce company in China, Dangdang once participated in the Internet rollout. The founder of Dangdang Yu Yu once mentioned in 2014 that when the gross profit margin fell from 22% when it was listed in 2010 to 13%, it did not recover to 16%-18% until 2013. The reason is that "hot money has spawned extensive e-commerce regardless of cost. For sexual expansion, many companies have sold negative margins."
Later, its choice was to withdraw from the market, jump out of the out-of-control situation led by capital, return to its original development track, and become an "outsider" in the industry. US stocks went public in 2010, privatization was initiated in 2015, and Dangdang was officially delisted in 2016. Later, although news of acquisition was reported in 2018, it eventually developed independently.
In 2018, Yu Yu affirmed the privatization and delisting decision: This is a very good business decision. Less than two years after the delisting of Dangdang, all aspects of the situation have continued to grow.
In 2020, according to the data released at the publisher's event, it was once again verified that the results of "outsiders" were not so terrible: the cumulative number of customers was 400 million, and the stable profitability lasted for 7 years; the total number of readers of Dangdangyun exceeded 57 million. Direct sales of paper books exceeded 60 million yuan.
Another "outsider" like Dangdang is Douban.
In July 2020, Douban changed its equity, and Shanghai Century Publishing Group became a new shareholder. This is its latest financing since its 2011 Series C financing. Although Douban has successively split Douban Reading and Douban FM in recent years, and has not stopped capital attempts to raise funds outside, Douban still feels free from the whole.
It boils down to the similarities between Dangdang and Douban, the similar beginning with books and reading as the core, which may be one of the reasons why they are able to break out of the Internet. As Yu Yu said at an entrepreneur forum in November 2020, "Reading is a mental aerobic exercise that forces you to find answers. This is also the value of reading."
Of course, a similar beginning is not enough. A similar beginning is not the final answer for Dangdang and Douban to become "outsiders". The final answer comes from values and more similar focus choices.
Choice and focus
In an interview with the media, Douban founder Abei once said that the primary goal of entrepreneurship should not be wealth, just like Google and Apple. After the beginning of such idealistic values, Douban has not stopped various commercialization explorations, and many of them have a large span, such as the diversion of e-commerce.
But in the end it still made a choice and focus, focusing on its own music, video, books, Douban Time, Douban FM, Douban Movie peripherals, etc. Although Douban's current commercialization still cannot be said to be successful, it is indeed one step closer to success.
It is the same choice and focus. JD.com and Suning are now developing from 3C to all categories of home appliances. After all, the growth of numbers most intuitively comes from scale. Dangdang has also explored the development of all categories, and even earlier, it launched the department store channel in 2005, increased its 3C in 2010, and entered the home in 2012, but then under the leadership of Yu Yu, Dangdang refocused on books.
"I have always believed that feelings can make fortune. There are multiple paths for development, and focus will bring fruit. The original intention will always be our origin." Yu Yu once mentioned in a public speech in 2018. In a recent public event, she must talk about books and reading: "I hope everyone embraces reading, embraces the digital reform, and goes a long way in the digital reform."
Yu Yu, who used to work in the Commercial Press and the Zhonghua Bookstore Compound, has been associated with books since he was a child. He knows the power of books deeply and believes in the commercial potential of books. Reading let her know that people have boundaries and choices, "give up making yourself the impossible, and then accept yourself completely. I can do eighth, then do eighth." In the end, this cognition continued to business, let Dangdang has a boundary.
"Dangdang did not become JD or Ali because I really don't have the capabilities of Liu Qiangdong and Ma Yun." Yu Yu's words are not "Internet". Internet people believe in "everything is possible." The first aim is to take the road to the sky. Capability and expansion boundaries seem to be the choices of the "weak", but why is it not a sober?
After earnestly analyzing the future development of China's Internet, Yu Yu put Dangdang's future on the scene. In August 2019, Dangdang launched the "scene change" and began deep changes from the inside to the outside: internally, the publication division was reorganized into three scene groups, focusing on "reaching customers, informing customers, and serving customers"; , Expand and find new scenarios, and strengthen the connection with users.
In 2020, in addition to the offline cooperation with Didi to launch a "mobile library" and a bookstore with Hema, Dangdang is also vigorously doing live broadcasts, short videos, etc., and Douyin, Taobao and other cooperation. In 2020, Dangdang will broadcast 3398 live broadcasts throughout the year, and cooperate with Douyin to live broadcast 46264 live broadcasts and 9156 short videos, forming a live broadcast matrix including talents, writers, publishers, and official accounts.
There is a choice, a choice, there is a choice, and as an "outsider" Dangdang also has his own ambitions.
At the recent Publishers Conference, Dangdang proposed the "1050 Plan": 1 billion yuan will be invested on the entire network, and the sales of key new books and good books will exceed 5 billion yards. We call on more publishers to join the camp to promote reading-around Scenario-oriented, Dangdang has launched a development plan for the next 20 years, a plan based on technology, people first, and growth.
Ai Reese, the founder of positioning theory, believes that the most effective way to promote the survival of a company is to shrink the focus of the brand, that is, "focus." The premise of Nokia entering the golden age at the end of the last century was to focus on the telecommunications business, abandon the papermaking, rubber, pharmaceutical and other businesses, find its own focus and continue to exert itself, and find its own opportunities in the new era.
The sign of a company’s maturity is never "I want to do" or "I want to cross-border", but knows how to make choices, knows "don't do things that shouldn't be done", "don't do unimportant things", "do important things well" thing". With the involution of the Internet, danger and opportunity coexist.
Think about the internet again
"The Internet is the first creation created by mankind that the creator himself does not understand. It is also the craziest attempt in anarchy in history," Google CEO Eric Schmidt once said. Recently, American social media events are indeed verifying this "crazy". But in fact, the beginning of networking was full of goodwill.
Internet entrants in the past two to three decades have their own goodwill and idealism: Alibaba's "make the world easy to do business", Baidu's "just click on Baidu, you will know", and Zhihu's "discover a bigger world" ", "Relaxed" in JD.com's "Save money and rest assured" corresponds to "Fight against fakes"......
It's just that in the long-term business operation, the daily life of many Internet companies has become digital, digital, efficient, and efficient. When the problems generated by the digital theory can no longer cover up growth, we need to rethink the Internet.
The essence of the development of the Internet has always been under the banner of connection and efficiency improvement, and integration with various industries, such as e-commerce, social networking, and entertainment; entering the era of industrial Internet, innovation in the consumer Internet field has entered a bottleneck. Pinduoduo and social e-commerce, Kuaishou, Douyin, short video, and live broadcast are one of the few outlets in recent years.
Perhaps this also explains why everyone is getting together to do community e-commerce in 2020. It is certainly related to the impact of the epidemic, but also related to the innovation and hunger of the Internet. But facts have proved that the previously tried-and-tested routines of capital and Internet companies did not work here. Of course, this does not mean that grocery shopping does not require an increase in efficiency, but that the “degree” is changing.
The Internet has improved the efficiency of various industries to a certain level. To further improve efficiency, the next step is to rely on the industrial Internet rather than the efficiency improvement of industries and single categories.
Of course, it does not mean that the consumer Internet can no longer be developed, but the focus of development needs to shift from digital to solving the derivative and legacy problems of the rapid development of the Internet, such as user experience, such as the connection with user emotions, such as the promotion of brand power without relying on price.
If we continue to focus solely on numbers under the capital trend, and fall into the "black hole" of involution and competition, the entire industry will be like shared bicycles before, and it will be overwhelmed. Not to mention the waste of social resources, it will also bring about the development of the Internet. "Redundancy"-a large number of ineffective explorations have caused a waste of resources, and the desire for expansion has brought about the complexity of the product and the decline in experience.
Is it a product of choice? Under the involution of the Internet, companies seem to have only two paths. One becomes bigger and the other becomes more dead. There has never been a "moderate", but the existence of Dangdang and Douban shows that there is indeed another path.