Douban, once again, was pushed to the cusp of the storm.
Under the fast pace of the Internet industry, Douban, founded in 2005, is particularly "low-key", and its advertising can hardly be seen in life; in terms of financing, its third round of financing and the fourth round of financing are separated by nearly a decade.
However, the Red Star Capital Bureau noted that recently, Douban has frequently attracted public attention because of "roll call", "removal" and "penalty".
On December 13, Douban was named by CCTV, pointing out that the Douban scores of "Wind Rise Luoyang" and "Who is the Murderer" appeared suspected of not being broadcast first, "water army" control evaluation and other phenomena. On the evening of the 14th, Douban responded late at night, and there has never been and will not be any cooperation related to ratings.
On December 2, Netinfo China released the news that from January to November 2021, the State Internet Information Office guided the Beijing Municipal Internet Information Office to impose 20 disposal penalties on Douban, with a total fine of 9 million yuan.
On December 9, the ministry of industry and information technology official micro released the news, Douban was removed because of the collection of user information beyond the scope, and the related topics were directly rushed to the sina Weibo hot search.
At the beginning of its establishment, Douban was defined as the "utopia" of literary and artistic youth and the "spiritual corner" of petty bourgeois groups with its unique community culture. Looking back at Douban's 16 years, the story of telling the community seems to have not changed, but on how to make money, Douban seems to have always seemed to be a bit "screwed".
The difficulty of commercialization and the recent turmoil such as being fined and removed from the shelves have accompanied the growth of The first generation of Internet users in China, where will douban go in the future?
(i)
At the beginning of Douban, tell your own story
The story of Douban, first of all, begins with its founder and its entrepreneurial story.
Douban founder Yang Bo, a native of Hanzhong, Shaanxi Province, graduated from Tsinghua University and received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, San Diego, and joined IBM in 1998 as a consulting scientist; from 2000 to 2004, he co-founded Egistics, a start-up company in supply chain management solutions in Beijing, and served as chief technology officer.
In October 2004, Yang Bo began the development of Douban in a Starbucks company in Beijing; in March 2005, Douban Was officially born.
It is worth mentioning that around 2005, China's Internet industry ushered in a new round of great changes: the concept of portal, blog, forum and so on began to become popular. At that time, Douban was unique with its simple and generous website interaction, content focus on knowledge sharing, so it was sought after by some niche groups.
In this year, Douban Network is Yang Bo's own Watercress. With no registered company and no office, he took on the role of programmer and content contributor on his own. It can also be seen that Yang Bo poured too much personal emotion into Douban.
At the beginning of 2006, Douban, which was launched less than a year ago, had 110,000 users, and also quickly received the attention of capital, and got the first financing, totaling 2 million US dollars; in February of the same year, Douban also ushered in the first formal employee in addition to Yang Bo, and began to gradually move towards regularization.
According to public data, as of May 2009, the number of registered users of Douban has reached 3.3 million in four years, the monthly click rate has reached 600 million, and the monthly access to users has reached 30 million. This year, Douban also received tens of millions of dollars in Series B financing.
The birth of Douban can be said to be innovative, and the Internet industry at home and abroad can hardly find any company to benchmark with. As for the commercialization of Douban, I am afraid that Yang Bo at that time did not have a clear direction.
The beginning of Douban seems to be telling its own story, and in the years since its development, Douban has also tried to make innovations. But perhaps because the "original intention" of Douban is difficult to change, the monetization story after Douban is also full of twists and turns.
(ii)
Douban has missed opportunities for "success"
In 2011, Yang Bo announced that Douban had basically achieved profitability, mainly from brand advertising; in September of the same year, Douban, which completed a $50 million C round of financing, began to make more commercial attempts.
2.1 Split multiple subplates to run independently
At the time of the wave of mobile Internet, Douban chose to use the method of splitting different sections of the Douban PC end to continuously launch a number of independent applications. However, there is not much connection between these independent applications, and the decision to forcibly split has made Douban bury many hidden dangers in the later development.
In 2012, Douban Reading was launched, using a model of sharing with the author; in the same year, Douban Movie Channel launched an online seat selection service. However, the small volume after the split is more difficult to be recognized by the public, and it is naturally difficult to form a scale effect. Subsequently, Douban FM was launched. Although the monetization model of audio payment is a reasonable business path, at that time, due to the rampant piracy in the domestic online audio industry, the weak awareness of user payment, and the relatively small volume of users, Douban FM also failed to set up the banner of the industry.
In 2013, Douban launched the e-commerce shopping guide product "Douban Stuff". At that time, when vertical e-commerce platforms such as Vipshop (NYSE:VIPS) and Mushroom Street (NYSE:MOGU) were popular, Douban, which went to share a piece of the pie, did not stir up too much market in the e-commerce business.
At the 2014 Douban annual meeting, Yang Bo personally responded: "Because I am overconfident in technology and products, Douban missed 3 years." ”
2.2 Entering movies, live broadcasts, e-commerce, no blockbusters
After that, Douban began to slow down on the road of commercialization, but it still did not stop exploring.
In 2016, Douban set up a subsidiary "Spaceship Pictures" to support the creation of young directors and enter the film industry.
In 2017, Douban launched the content payment product Douban Time, joining the boom in the field of knowledge payment.
In November 2021, public information showed that the "Douban Online Live Streaming Android Version Application System" of Beijing Douwang Technology Co., Ltd. was registered and approved, with the registration number 2021SR1732546 and the approval date being November 15, 2021. However, as of now, Douban has not officially announced its entry into the field of live broadcasting, so it is not known in what form its live broadcast will meet with users.
In the past few years, Douban has tried in many fields such as online audio, knowledge payment, and e-commerce business, but there has never been a "hit" explosive product, and it has never been able to find the core business as a support point for enterprise development.
2.3 Why is it difficult to succeed in the commercialization of Douban?
On the one hand, from the aforementioned early Douban split each function into separate applications, making their independent APP an island, to a certain extent, cutting off the stickiness of the original user group for Douban, making Douban without focus force constantly being surpassed by competitors.
On the other hand, it may come from the "paranoia" of the Douban team. In an interview with the First Financial Weekly, Yang Bo was asked by reporters how to view the commercial dilemma of Douban. His answer at the time was: "Douban is a pure product company, and he cares more about the value of the product." ”
In The attitude of Douban to the advertising business can also be seen its "strict", former Douban product and technology VP Geng Xinyue once said: Douban formulated advertising rules are that the daily opening screen only opens 1/4 of the traffic to the advertisement, at the same time, if the user has seen the product advertisement once a day, no matter how many times it is opened, it will not show him this advertisement again.
Perhaps the Douban team does not resist commercialization, but the team is too rational and does not want Douban to lose its "self" at the beginning of its establishment in the process of commercialization. This also makes every step taken after Douban cautious and limited.
(iii)
Today's Douban, but because of the content of internal and external troubles
Today's Douban, for most users, more "sense of presence" may come from the "Douban score" or "Douban group".
However, the too "subjective" evaluations and remarks in the Douban community are also controversial and questionable.
On December 8, 2016, the People's Daily client reprinted an article by China Film News and published it under the title of "Douban and Maoyan Movie Ratings Face Credit Crisis, Bad Reviews Hurt the Film Industry". Subsequently, the relevant discussions about the Douban score continued to appear, and many views believed that Douban was a niche group draped in the skin of the public, and this part of the niche group continued to influence the decision-making of the public.
This year, Douban once again fell into a situation of internal and external troubles.
On December 9, 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the removal of 106 apps, and Douban was among them, due to the collection of personal information beyond the scope. A few days ago, on December 2, Netinfo China released the news that from January to November 2021, the State Internet Information Office instructed the Beijing Municipal Internet Information Office to impose 20 disposal penalties on Douban, with a total of 9 million yuan in fines.
The main reason for the multiple penalties is that the platform disseminates online publications containing prohibited content, including obscene, pornographic, gambling, violence and other information.
All of this may originate from the decentralized community platform of Douban, which is now gradually out of control for the content itself.
The invasion of rice circle culture, gray water army, and marketing accounts has caused great harm to Douban's community and scoring system. The polarized ratings on Douban and the extreme remarks of individuals in the group are constantly damaging the original small and beautiful community atmosphere of Douban, and also damage the entire Internet ecology.
brief summary
Once Douban, there were many opportunities for transformation, but they were all missed; now Douban, in its only remaining "one acre and three points of land", is still internal and external troubles, full of contradictions.
Under today's fierce market competition, Douban is more difficult to change, and perhaps what Douban can do now is only "be itself".
Red Star News reporter Yu Yao Liu Mi
Edited by Yu Dongmei
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