It's time for the extensive Internet era to come to an end

Xie Ruolin

In the past year, the Internet industry has undergone a deep adjustment, and the speed, strength and scope are impressive.

A month ago, there was news that a large Internet factory opened the "optimization tide", at that time, the author had asked a friend who worked in the company about the latest situation, and the reply was "don't listen to the outside world". A few days later, however, he asked the reporter, "If there is a suitable job, remember to push me." Looking at his circle of friends, the latest state is the industry dynamics at the beginning of this year, when the community group buying burning subsidy war is in full swing.

This is the epitome of the Internet "hit workers" in 2021, and it is also the era that the Internet industry is experiencing. From the perspective of the secondary market alone, the life of Internet companies is difficult. As of December 13, the Hang Seng Technology Index of Hong Kong stocks fell by 25.2% during the year, and the US stock CSI Overseas China Internet Index fell by 41.84% in the past year.

Many research reports believe that this market adjustment is a short-term phenomenon under policy norms, but from a deeper point of view, the golden period of the barbaric development of the Internet industry has entered the end, domestic network users have exceeded 1 billion, and almost all sub-categories have more than 600 million daily active users of Apps, and the incremental space of these C-end products is limited.

WeChat, Alipay, Douyin, Kuaishou... These "behemoths" are deeply bound to the lives of users. Someone on Douyin once asked, "If you want to live alone on a desert island for a year, you can only bring one thing, what will you bring?" The most liked response was, "Give me a phone and I'll be there for the rest of my life." ”

Is it the phone itself that everyone can't do without? No, what cannot be separated is the colorful online world and the rich app products. It is undeniable that in the past decade or so, China's Internet industry has developed rapidly, and some companies can already compete with silicon valley giants.

But the stock game, the inner volume intensified. Traffic costs are getting higher and higher, and small and medium-sized enterprises are unable to gain a foothold in the C-end Red Sea market. In the process of the development of the Internet industry, chaos occurs frequently, such as burning money and enclosures, monopolies of giants, winners take all, factional disputes, and arbitrary infringement of user privacy, etc., disorderly market behavior disrupts the innovation and healthy development of the industry.

Correction is opportune, no rules and no squares. Only by carrying out orderly regulation, marginal improvement of the competitive landscape, small and medium-sized enterprises gaining living space, and user privacy and security can be guaranteed, can China's Internet have a future.

Strong supervision is both volatility and opportunity, some bubbles have been punctured, profitability instead of "storytelling" has become the most core investment element, small and medium-sized enterprises as long as anchor technological innovation has the opportunity to rise.

The magnificent money-burning subsidy war in the Internet industry will eventually pass, the law of the jungle in the extensive era will no longer apply, capital will return to rationality, the new era, the new bad environment and new mission, there will always be new giants rising.