After Zhang Chaoyang "cut the clan", where will Sohu go? (Turn)
Text / Cat Ear Tech Noah
The Witness of China's Internet, Sohu, which has been established for 18 years, is ushering in the biggest change since its establishment.
Internally, Zhang Chaoyang, who came back from seclusion, completely reformed the management system of "fan towns" that had lasted for many years.
With Wang Xin (former Sohu Co-President and COO), Fang Gang (former Sohu Senior Vice President), Wang Tao (former Changyou CEO), Liu Chun (former Sohu Video President), Zeng Xiongjie (former Sohu Mobile Video General Manager), etc. With the departure of the "feudal lords", Zhang Chaoyang began to really control multiple departments including Changyou, Sohu Video, and Sohu Mobile. On the other hand, the departure of the "lords" also led to the departure of a large number of middle-level and grass-roots managers. In the fast-paced Internet competition, Sohu's many business lines laid out earlier than its competitors began to be overtaken by competitors.
Externally, Sohu's business data has been declining for several consecutive quarters.
On October 24, Sohu's latest 2016 Q3 financial report showed that the company's third-quarter revenue was US$411 million, a year-on-year decline of 21%; the net loss was US$65 million, compared with a net profit of US$49 million in the same period last year. Sohu expects total revenue in the fourth quarter of 2016 to be US$370 million to US$400 million, with a net loss of US$85 million to US$95 million, which means that Sohu's future revenue will continue to decline and its net loss will continue to expand.
In this case, has Zhang Chaoyang's reform of Sohu failed? After eliminating the major factions and the top of the mountain, Sohu is now experiencing the pain of transformation, or will it go to the abyss?
With these questions in mind, Maoer Tech visited a number of senior executives and middle-level managers who had left Sohu, hoping to restore the reasons for Zhang Chaoyang's "cutting the vassal" and the various impacts arising therefrom.
The Pain of Fan Township
"I think Charles (Zhang Chaoyang's English charles) is the godfather of China's Internet. When he went to Shenzhen to give a speech to young people, the audience heard Ma Huateng's blood boil, and he founded Tencent instead. It can be said that how many of these big men are powerful today. All of them have been influenced by him. However, look at Sohu over the years, it has been reduced to the camp of second-tier Internet companies." Speaking of Sohu, a former Sohu executive who asked to remain anonymous seemed rather regretful.
He believes that Zhang Chaoyang's keen sense of smell on the Internet exceeds that of most CEOs in the Internet field.
Before Gu Yongqiang established a new portal, Zhang Chaoyang saw the broad prospects in the video field; when SNS was the most popular, Zhang Chaoyang asserted that this market was only a flash in the pan; after Sina launched the Weibo business, he immediately judged that it would be a important market, and personally led the team to ask Sohu to fully compete with Sina for Weibo resources. When Ding Lei was not optimistic about mobile games, Zhang Chaoyang repeatedly pointed out to Wang Tao, the head of Changyou at that time, that he should not be a game platform. After the end game, the mobile game will usher in glory.
However, the result was the rise of Sina Weibo. Although Zhang Chaoyang did not publicly admit the failure of Sohu Weibo, he opened an account on Sina Weibo. Sohu is the earliest Internet company in the video field in China, but it was squeezed out of the first-line camp by iQiyi and Youku Tudou. Gong Yu, CEO of iQiyi, and Gu Yongqiang, CEO of Youku Tudou, are both from Sohu. After Ding Lei, who was not optimistic about mobile games at the beginning, realized the importance of mobile games, NetEase quickly became a giant in the mobile game market. When the game media reported that traditional end game companies were not suitable for the mobile game era, Changyou was often used. Do the opposite.
It can be said that in the hottest field of the Internet in the past 10 years, Sohu has participated in the layout, even earlier than others, but it has always been in the middle of getting up early and catching a late episode.
"The biggest reason Sohu missed many opportunities is that many key business line supervisors are King of the Mountains, and Zhang Chaoyang can't command them." A Sohu middle-level officer admitted frankly.
The other party revealed that in the first half of 2011, Ding Lei and Zhang Chaoyang reached a consensus on the rise of the mobile game club in many exchanges. Later, Ding Lei, who has always been known for his miserliness in the Internet circle, established several mobile game project teams within NetEase. Many of the mobile game products he was optimistic about could even have an unlimited budget.
Zhang Chaoyang also repeatedly asked Wang Tao, the CEO of Changyou at the time, to deploy mobile games. However, Wang Tao, who became famous in the first battle of "Tianlong Babu", focused on improving the mental outlook of employees - improving their "ideological and moral" and "" Spiritual Pursuit" to help employees "ask their minds".
It is understood that at the critical moment when the opponents are in full swing to deploy the mobile game business, Wang Tao not only did not pay attention to mobile games because of Zhang Chaoyang's request, but instead launched a huge internal "Get rid of pain and awaken your true self" campaign.
A former Changyou grassroots supervisor told Maoer Tech that at that time Changyou provided special benefits for employees of any level to go to India for repairs. As long as employees applied, they could be granted a 20-day vacation to practice in India, and everything generated from the practice. Expenses will be reimbursed by Changyou.
For a while, product development and trend judgment are no longer important, and cleaning and repairing has become the main theme of Changyou. The promotion of bottom-level employees and the evaluation of middle-level employees all see the results of Qingxiu.
During this period, Changyou invested heavily in the research and development of two products, "Lu Ding Ji OL" and "Magic Sword", which ended in failure.
The source revealed that Changyou's practice incident made Zhang Chaoyang realize that some of the businesses hatched by Sohu had begun to break away from his baton, but this was not the only reason for Zhang Chaoyang's determination to cut the clan.
In 2010, Sina's Weibo product caught Zhang Chaoyang's attention. According to people close to Zhang Chaoyang at the time, after quietly trying Sina Weibo, Zhang Chaoyang immediately decided that Sohu should compete with Sina in this market. But his judgment was not implemented.
A middle-level person who was in charge of Sohu’s products revealed that Sina Weibo started with entertainment, and Sohu’s resources in entertainment are far better than Sina’s. The business department should fully cooperate with Sohu Weibo to invite celebrities to come over, and require celebrities to only open on Sohu. Exclusive Weibo, this proposal was rejected by the other party. At that time, the person in charge of Sohu Entertainment's contact with artists said bluntly: "If the stars are willing to go to Sina to open Weibo, let them open it, and they will also come to Sohu anyway. play again."
"At that time, there were many factions within Sohu, Sohu Weibo was well done, and it had nothing to do with Sohu Entertainment, which caused Sohu to miss a lot of opportunities. Even if Zhang Chaoyang was in charge of many businesses, in front of the faction, everyone was on the surface and secretly peaceful. Dig pits for each other." The middle layer said.
Half a year later, Sina Weibo and Sohu Weibo began to widen the gap. As a last resort, Zhang Chaoyang began to cheer for Sohu Weibo, and took the initiative to call his friends in the entertainment industry to invite them to open Sohu Weibo. But it was the half year that Sohu Weibo missed, so they could no longer catch up with Sina Weibo.
It happened at this time that Zhang Chaoyang suffered from depression and began a one-year retreat.
"Starting about two years ago, I felt that I had a problem, which caused me to be in a state of unease when I was working, so I told the team that I had to solve my problem." Zhang Chaoyang, who returned from retreat in 2013, publicly made the above-mentioned statement. Express.
It is understood that the one-year retreat has caused Sohu to miss more opportunities. Zhang Chaoyang's departure has also raised Sohu's internal friction to a higher level.
Zhang Chaoyang reforms Sohu: two sides of the coin
"In the past, my goal was to make more money, and I must be greater. If I saw that I was surpassed by Robin Li and the others, including the people who went out to start a business under me, I felt resentful, but now I don't have these emotions anymore. Now I find that it’s not enough to just rely on internal entrepreneurship and splits, and it’s not enough to let everyone fight on their own.” Zhang Chaoyang said in an interview about the changes before and after the retreat in early 2014 after his return from the retreat.
At the same time, Zhang Chaoyang opened the prelude to the reform of Sohu.
In November 2014, Sohu issued an announcement announcing the departure of Changyou CEO Wang Tao. A month later, Shang Na, editor-in-chief of Sohu Video Content Operation Center, resigned. In January 2015, Sohu Senior Vice President Fang Gang announced his resignation. After these executives left, Zhang Chaoyang's "Central Army" Chen Dewen became the CEO of Changyou, Fan Gongchen took over Sohu's product technology department and content department, and Zeng Yi took charge of Sohu's marketing and other external departments as vice president.
"The demise of the faction enabled Zhang Chaoyang's internal strategy to be implemented, but the departure of the faction has also led to a large number of Sohu middle-level and grass-roots managers leaving, leaving a vacuum in management, which has also caused Sohu to miss a few more in the past two years. Opportunity. So the coin always has heads and tails," said another person familiar with the matter.
According to the source, Sohu is the first Internet company in China to attach importance to mobile news clients. Since 2013, Sohu has established an independent news client editorial team, and piloted self-media in three channels of finance, entertainment, and technology. Although Toutiao was already well-known at that time, in the market ranking of iResearch, a research institute, Sohu News client was ahead of competitors such as Tencent and Toutiao.
Fang Gang, the senior vice president of Sohu at the time, planned to separate Sohu's mobile business from Sohu's parent company and spin it off. In order to achieve this goal, at the beginning of 2014, Sohu Mobile News Client, which ranked first in the market at that time, began to explore and attempt commercialization.
"At that time, Fang Gang was the top leader of the two major businesses, Sohu Video Mobile and Sohu Mobile News. In his vision, he hoped that Sohu's mobile business would be the same as Changyou's spin-off from Sohu. If the plan goes away, there may be no Toutiao today," the source said.
According to the other party, Fang Gang made many suggestions to Zhang Chaoyang to split up, but they were all rejected.
"With the examples of Changyou and Sogou first, I'm afraid Charles will not establish a new feudal lord." said a person close to Zhang Chaoyang.
There is no more evidence to prove whether Fang Gang's departure is related to Zhang Chaoyang's veto of Sohu's spin-off of the mobile business. But the fact is, with Fang Gang's departure, many core management of Sohu Mobile News Client also chose to leave soon afterwards.
With Yue Jianxiong, Zeng Xiongjie, Liu Peng, the core management of Sohu mobile news client leaving one after another, Sohu mobile news client was surpassed by Toutiao and Tencent in early 2015, and then was surpassed by NetEase news client.
Sohu's mobile business has entered a downturn. Correspondingly, its former rival, Toutiao, has become the target of Tencent and Alibaba's competition by virtue of its position as the No. 1 mobile news client. According to public data, Toutiao’s annual revenue has exceeded 10 billion yuan, and it has an installed capacity of more than 580 million.
"Actually, this is a very obvious reason. After Changyou's spin-off and independent listing, a large number of people have achieved financial freedom, so everyone is highly motivated. After Zhang Chaoyang rejected the plan for the independent spin-off of Sohu's mobile business, the core backbones did the same thing. , but suddenly I can't see the future. Naturally, I have to make other plans. Not only Sohu, but also in BAT. The core team has no interest, so where does the hard work come from? Zhou Hongyi has figured it out in recent years, so now he is going to join forces internally. Fleet, let the team take their own risk, and the company shares the benefits with them." Internet analyst Wang Ping said.
challenge
Zhang Chaoyang has completed the internal reform of Sohu. Except for Sogou, all of Sohu's businesses have been taken over by the "Central Army". The future rise and fall of this company depends more on Zhang Chaoyang's judgment.
According to the 2016 Q3 financial report, Sohu's online advertising revenue including "brand advertising, search and search-related business revenue" in the third quarter was 262 million US dollars, down 13% year-on-year; online game revenue was 99 million US dollars, down 35% year-on-year; Brand advertising revenue was $111 million, down 27% year-over-year; search and search-related revenue was $151 million, up 2% year-over-year.
Zhang Chaoyang later stated in the conference call that Sohu Video's future content procurement costs will decrease, and at the same time, the number of self-produced dramas with better output ratios will double. On the Sohu media platform, the mobile advertising contribution has exceeded 50%.
Judging from the financial report data, Sohu is not useless. Although various incomes are still in decline, the cash-burning trend of video business has begun to improve, the proportion of mobile advertising revenue is increasing, and Sohu's business has also increased year-on-year.
Next, let's see how Zhang Chaoyang strategizes.
Original link: http://www.huxiu.com/article/168981.html