Dr. Tao Chuang , founder and chairman of Weizhi Technology, founder of PGVerse, former global head of Microsoft Virtual Earth Department, former Canadian National Chief Research Professor of Space Information, partner and former CEO of PPTV Juli Media Group, GeoTango Founder and CEO of Map Company. He is a "cross-border" legend in China's Internet industry. He has rich experience in operating local and international Internet companies. He has successfully founded a number of Internet companies. As an angel investor, he has successfully invested in many companies and established a 3-year-old company. PPTV, an online TV Internet company with 100 million active users, is one of three companies directly invested in China by Japan's SoftBank Masayoshi Son (one of which is Alibaba).
On May 13, 2022, in the fourth issue of "Boge Super Dialogue", Boge had an in-depth dialogue with Dr. Tao Chuang. This dialogue attracted more than 40,000 people online in real time, and the topic became popular over 10,000 times. Dr. Tao Chuang has won the online support of many fans with his profound views and deep insights into the industry. This dialogue mainly talked about the opportunities in the next stage of the Internet, the understanding of web3.0 and the metaverse, how the Internet maintains ecological balance, and some of Dr. Tao Chuang's own rich experiences and entrepreneurial stories.
"Bo Ge Super Dialogue" live broadcast room Bo Ge and Dr. Tao Chuang won the championship
The following is the essence of the text, the content has been deleted:
About 30 years of the Internet
Maybe Bo Ge (Zhu Bo) and I both experienced the first generation of the Internet, the web1.0 era. Bo Ge was doing mobile search at the time, but it was a little early, and mobile search hadn’t started yet. We should have been in 2006 and 07 The year just started. Now when we talk about the era of web 1.0, everyone may know that it is what we now call the Sina era and the Baidu era. In fact, Google is still in the 1.0 era. In the 2.0 era, content is generated by users. In the past, it was called the platform-generated content era, just like In the Weibo era, including the current Douyin and Bilibili, user-generated content may still be there.
It’s just that in user-generated content, we allocate some value to users . Bloggers didn’t make money at that time on Weibo, but now these up owners and anchors can still make some money, and content creators have begun to have value. Assigned, we are basically still in the 2.0 era.
The future 3.0 actually sees two directions. One direction of development is to move more towards virtualization. One method may be the integration of virtuality and reality. This is the integration of virtuality and reality, just like what we call oto, including Didi and Meituan are more closely connected to entities.
Of course, there is also a blur. On the line of information and content, we continue to do more information and content to add value. But now it seems that it is a problem of 3.0. Maybe the Internet has reached such a node now, because Internet 1.0 has also Okay, 2.0 or not, I think it’s basically over. 3.0 is just the beginning, so no matter whether China is now starting to carry out anti-monopoly on the Internet, in fact, anti-monopoly is also being carried out abroad. Google and Facebook are attending hearings every day, and they are explaining to a bunch of politicians and senators every day. So they've reached the top of the internet.
Changes in Internet Traffic Acquisition
I am very fortunate to work in the video industry after returning to China. In fact, in the mobile Internet era, China is famous for its business models. Many models may be related to our population base in China, because in any vertical industry in China, even if you are 5% of the population The share is also tens of millions, enough to support one or two companies with more than 1 billion yuan.
Therefore, the user characteristics and user base of many American companies are very different from those in China. When we were in the mobile Internet, many people in Chinese companies were very proud. Look at our business model innovations, such as Pinduoduo’s so-called sinking to three Fourth tier, etc., there are many models that cannot be established abroad.
I think there are three factors that make China Mobile Internet so good. The first factor is the population factor . This is because the Internet is an economy of scale. Only places with a large population can produce Internet companies. You see, there are very few Internet companies in Europe and the United States. , which is the economic factor of population.
The second factor is China's capital factor , because capital has seen that these Internet companies in China have grown so fast in such an external environment, and their valuations are very high, and the United States also highly recognizes China's Internet, so the capital factor has indeed promoted Since so many companies in China have the right to play cards at the table, this is the second factor.
I think the third factor is an endogenous factor in China, which I have not experienced when starting an overseas business.
China’s competition is what we now call involution. This may be nowhere else in the world. The Chinese people’s perseverance in competition, this drive to create wealth, and this innovation prove their ability. . This kind of thing can be taught from childhood, because it is not easy for everyone to stand out among so many people. Therefore, everyone in China has been taught since childhood that they will take risks for granted, but no matter what, this is the perseverance of China as a whole. Well, competitiveness is good, so it promotes society, because the development of society does rely on a kind of competition, just like what we used to call the American Dream, and at that time it was called the Chinese Internet Dream. There are so many successful and outstanding companies in China. This kind of competition is An internal motivation . Without this kind of competition, in fact, it is difficult for you to get out of this kind of external force, so competition forces you out. I remember when we were doing PPTV, because the competition was too big, There was no time to rest, and maybe no time to eat. I remember sometimes my legs were shaking during meetings, and my blood sugar was too low, so I didn’t eat. It was really bloody. Competitors are also very strong, and the Chinese market environment is also very difficult. There are many unfriendly factors, bad factors, mutual attacks, etc. But competition can also make these companies grow. Of course, the remaining ones will come out from here. Opportunities, there is not such a big competitive pressure overseas, of course it has something to do with Chinese investment, Chinese investment is a herd effect. Following the trend.
I think there are three stages of world development . The first stage is the physical world stage. As you know, based on many traditional enterprises in the physical world, the better the location I choose to open my store, the more successful I will be. At that time, I thought that anyone who found a store in Lujiazui or Wangfujing in Beijing could make money by opening a steamed stuffed bun shop, clothing store, hotel, or restaurant, because that car had the largest traffic and could make money with anything he opened. This is physics. world, so the physical world is an era of seizing resources .
So in the Internet world, we have no Internet entrepreneurs, no resources, and good locations have been taken away by others, so he has no way to seize resources in the physical world. What can he do? I can only seize online attention and use user traffic to capture users. The more users I capture, then I will transfer the user traffic to you. The clothing store will direct it to your barber shop, and the barber shop will then direct it to the restaurant. This is what I capture. Traffic method, so have you discovered the Internet model?
The Internet actually no longer produces any material. It is just a production relationship that solves the problem of information dispatch. This is why many people call the Internet a virtual economy. Why? He didn't produce steamed buns or clothes, nor did he do processing. He didn't do anything. He just transferred and dispatched user traffic, so it was just a revolution in production relations, not a revolution in productivity. , so it is called a virtual economy. As mentioned earlier, the Internet has reached its peak, so it will definitely move to the next stage.
So at that time, I thought that it must integrate online and offline, or I think it must have an economy that integrates virtual and real. The economy is no longer a real economy, nor a virtual economy, but an economy that integrates virtual and real. I call it a digital twin. Phy-Gital World, the digital twin world is an economy that integrates virtual and real. It no longer solves the problem of user traffic, nor does it completely solve the problem of productivity. It should combine productivity and production relations. Effective solution.
What is the essence of the economy that finally integrates reality and reality? The C-side and B-side must be balanced.
The Internet likes the C-end very much. This is not entirely right. Let the C-end always buy the cheapest products, and no one will produce better products. On the one hand, letting the C side gain benefits is to win the world. It used to be called letting the C side win the world. This sentence was true during the Internet era, but after a while, when you reach a certain monopoly, it is not right and should not be In this era, users win the world, but users and productivity must be balanced between the end of product production and users.
I think of this, it was in a fish pond when we were learning cybernetics, right? I have fry, small fish and big fish. The small fish eat the small fish, the fish eat the fry, and the big fish eat the small fish. In a large ecology, it is actually about ecological balance. There are too many small fish. It doesn’t work, and it doesn’t work if there are too few big fish. In fact, in the entire entrepreneurial process, the cognitive dimension is often not that high in the early stage, and we don’t think about how to build an ecosystem. Look at our successful companies today, most of them are successful now. A company is good at its ecology.
I have worked on the Internet, and I know about C-side things. I have also worked on maps and the three-dimensional earth. If we put them together, can we create a world called a digital twin and create an economy that integrates virtual and real things, which is what we want for ourselves. What we do, such as Didi Taxi or Uber, is not biased toward users like Meituan, nor is it biased toward merchants, so I have to strike a balance that allows merchants to benefit as well as users to benefit. Ecology, I want to make such a system to serve the b-side and c-side, but it is an ecosystem to support it. This is what I want to do, and it is actually a model formed from a conceptual perspective or this cognitive perspective.
The combination of reality and reality in the metaverse
Web3.0 and the metaverse, I think these two concepts are different. They are different because of the connection. Some people mix them together. Let me define it today. There are many things that overlap, but they are considered in different dimensions. Let us first look at the metaverse. Since it is the metaverse, then we Let’s look at some general consensus, that is, society is always composed of material and spirit. This is the material and spirit we studied before, or called productivity and production relations in Marxism. Production relations actually solve the problem of information, and productivity solves the problem. This material production problem.
There is another word that is also very popular right now, called energy and information. In fact, they both mean the same thing. Energy and information are because energy and matter are the same thing. Matter can convert energy. Information is basically a virtual thing. , a real thing.
What I just talked about is a real thing and an imaginary thing. Then there is another one, which is the most classic Taoist culture in China, which is Yin and Yang.
Taoism talks about a balance of yin and yang, which is actually what the metaverse should do. I think the world has an ultimate balance of yin and yang, a balance between reality and reality, a balance between energy and information, a balance between matter and spirit, a balance between productivity and production relations . So we have gone through the physical world. At that time, it was completely driven by matter, energy, and productivity. That was the time of the physical world.
Later, we entered the Internet era, which was all spiritually driven and information-driven. To put it bluntly, this kind of drive is now in the next era. I think that only by balancing the two can we create an economic entity with trend convergence, which is trend convergence. Then I think the essence of the metaverse should be the fusion of virtuality and reality. It is neither completely free from virtuality, nor imaginary, nor real. It is the fusion of virtuality and reality. If you are working on the Internet, you should blend the virtual with the real. If you used to work in traditional industries, or some things in the physical world, you should use this to integrate virtuality, so it must be a fusion of virtuality and reality. The online and offline integration we talked about before, this OTO has reached a new level. At a high level, it is called the ecological system of virtual and real integration, which is where we return to the final issue of yin and yang balance. I think it's an ultimate and as long as it's not balanced it's bound to cause problems.
In fact, what our society consists of? What we are following is called the digital twin school. Digital twins are not the simple concepts that everyone used to think. Some three-dimensional visualizations are not called digital twins. Digital twins truly turn a space into numbers, and then we humans There is an ID person, and there is an ID, whether it is a natural person, a digital person, or an ID person. After the digital space with me becomes digital, the digital space and the person themselves form a new society, because our society It is composed of space and people. What is the metaverse?
It is n spaces. After one space is digitized, it can be turned into n spaces. This space can be copied, recreated, transmitted, and reformed. Then people can also become n people, or there can be n digital people. There can be n robots , so the chemical reaction of combining humans with digital space turns into n societies, and this is our metaverse, so I think the metaverse is a carbon-based life and a physical space for us humans The crisis and the fusion of life have created a metaverse, but this metaverse must be an entity that merges reality and reality, rather than a simple set of things that exist. If the game company can do it to the end, there is no need to mention a new one. The metaverse
In the process of revolution and innovation of productivity, many elements of production relations can also be included, including how to solve information symmetry we just mentioned, so that when solving some technological innovations or some product innovations, it can be re-engineered , so I think there is too much room for thinking.
Big data is pushed to you. It has a strong big data recommendation system. This is also an intelligent system, so they are also a technology company. When your ID is not on the same platform, and when your computing power is not on the same platform, then There will definitely be a third-party company to build such a recommendation system, but this has not yet been implemented, so web3.0 has begun to be implemented. ID has not yet started to connect with services, or connect with content. If it wants to connect well with content, it must need another platform, which is an intelligent recommendation platform, because it needs to connect people with goods, and people with information. It is a core thing to solve the production relationship. In fact, this thing has not started to appear in web3.0 yet, but I believe it will gradually appear, so what will web3.0 start to solve? It means starting to decentralize every link.
Then only after such decentralization can we reach the final distribution of economic benefits. How should economic benefits be distributed? Now, although everyone knows that Internet celebrities who live broadcast on Douyin and Bilibili will also be paid by these platforms, but it is the platform that has the final say. Why? The big data recommendation engine is in the platform. If you are not good with the platform, I will not recommend it to you, then your traffic will be gone. If I don’t like you, you will be dead, so it is in control and distribution, and the platform has the final say. .
So when we decentralize the data, decentralize the computing power, decentralize the ID, decentralize the content and service providers connected to the ID, and use a decentralized engine to push everything, it will be possible to Decentralization of economic interests. This is the core model of web3.0, which means that everything from economics to computing is a digitally completed decentralized model. Where is the entrance? Who is the entrance? Who will form an entrance? In fact, among Internet platform companies, one is called content and the other is called channel. In fact, I think this understanding is wrong. In the past, on the Internet, we first made PPTV, which is a movie theater. The people who make movies are the content, so PPTV is a collection of movie theaters. In fact, The above is wrong, why?
Because the offline world cinema is indeed a channel. A cinema has to accommodate 1,000 viewers. If it wants 1 billion viewers, the cinema cannot open. It is impossible. But there is no such problem on the Internet. The Internet can absorb a lot of traffic in a day. For example, there is an Internet celebrity named Liu Genghong who does gymnastics and shuttlecock exercises at home. His traffic alone has attracted the attention of hundreds of millions of people on the entire network. This is something that can happen on the Internet. The Internet can generate a huge traffic entrance, that is, there is a flow. The content behind Liu Genghong may have been made by others, and the calculation behind Liu Genghong Maybe someone else has done it, but the entrance is still a problem. How to solve this entrance problem?
The entrance is still centralized. If there is no entrance, it is completely one-to-one, then go back to our previous BT download seeds. As we all know, BT download seeds, point-to-point download content, people go to each other individually, maybe there is manual Intelligence is better than before, but it is completely point-to-point. What kind of problems will this cause? The supervision issue is completely messy, because there is no one to supervise it, whether the content is legal or not, what is good or bad, and what is not regulated, so this creates It’s a huge problem, so I personally think it’s unlikely to happen if it’s purely centralized .
What will happen to the real economy in the future?
Physical problems still exist, including our current epidemic situation, which everyone has seen. Human beings must gradually move towards the experience economy, so the entire offline problem is very huge, so I think whether some Internet models can be used, of course everyone is also discussing it.
Let me give you the simplest example. There are now 10 million restaurants in China. The normal annual mortality rate is 30%. More than 3 million restaurants die every day. So assuming that the cost of opening a restaurant is 1 million yuan. , if more than 3 million stores die, there will be 3 trillion
Is there a way for him to use a slightly digital AI model to help him calculate where to open a store and how much money he can make when opening a store?
We can actually calculate this place, because our Wisdom’s space-time AI has a 15-minute life circle. A 15-minute life circle may only accommodate up to 3 hot pot restaurants. If there are 10 hot pot restaurants here, don’t we? At least 7 of those who eat hot pot every day will die sooner or later. Whether they die in three months, one year or two years, they will always die because the supply exceeds demand. What I just said about ecological balance is that ecological balance can be calculated using intelligent calculations using data. But people nowadays are blind. There is a store there that is very cheap to rent, and the store is so cheap, so hurry up and open it. This is not the way to make decisions in this era.
The solution to the ecology through the way we used to do the Internet is the C-side and the B-side. The problem we solve now is a balance between the C-side and the B-side. The B-side is a supply, and the C-side is a demand. You solve the supply and demand. A computational relationship problem can be solved using a set of methods, so I think there is still a lot of demand for models like this offline.
Looking back, why can we do this kind of model analysis now? If we go back to the 1990s or 1980s, we did not have accurate data at that time and had no way to analyze anyone. So what was the market adjustment at that time?
Relying on the invisible hand of the market to adjust supply and demand, today there is so much big data that can accurately help you make an analysis and prediction. We should not make this kind of mistake, so this is what we often do. We are doing precision marketing, including when doing promotion. In fact, if you do some speculation and analysis of the previous model, you can reduce a lot of things.
So if this kind of infrastructure is built, and we look at the next development, it may generate a huge productivity for the country, so this is also a so-called economic development model that is currently being debated at home and abroad. We used to call it a pure market economy, but it was still an economy with state intervention. We don’t call it a planned economy, but an economy with state intervention. It’s just a balance between these two things.
Everyone is also seeing this change. The reason why China is developing so fast is because China does have a national economic intervention, which has caused China to solve a problem of more than one billion people. It is not purely market-oriented. Yes, it has an integration of market and country, which is also a balance.
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