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Internet giants please answer 2022: layoffs, door-cutting, opening, sinking, going to sea, technology

author:Everybody is a product manager
Bidding farewell to the stormy 2021 and entering 2022, the life of the Internet giants does not seem to have changed for the better: Baidu's live broadcast business, Alibaba's local life business have made rumors of layoffs, Kuaishou has drastically reduced employee benefits, and a number of large factories have been rumored to shrink in 2022... In addition to these giants, there are also a large number of small and medium-sized players in the new economy and Internet subdivision tracks, who are trapped in the bottleneck of development and need to turn over in the new year. This article analyzes the development trend of Internet giants in the next year through six keywords, and recommends interested children's shoes to read and communicate
Internet giants please answer 2022: layoffs, door-cutting, opening, sinking, going to sea, technology

Today, as the beginning of the "Outlook 2022" series, according to the old rules, we will focus on the most concerned group of companies - Internet giants. In the past year, Ali, Tencent, Pinduoduo, Meituan, etc. have experienced multiple challenges such as stock price diving, market value decline, the main business hitting the growth ceiling, and anti-monopoly penalties, and can only grope forward in adversity.

After entering the new year, these troubles have not disappeared: policy supervision continues to tighten, market competition is intensifying, and their respective development bottlenecks are more obvious. In this context, if the Internet giants want to get out of the current predicament, they also need to start from themselves and make some changes.

Among them, the most important and critical changes may be condensed in a few keywords.

First, layoffs and burden reductions

Near the end of the year, layoffs and contractions have once again become the main work of Internet giants: Alibaba, Baidu, ByteDance, Kuaishou and other big factories have all fallen.

Baidu was exploded to the mobile ecological business group knife, games, live broadcast two major business lines are the hardest hit areas, the latter layoff ratio is reported to be as high as 90%, education, MEG and other side businesses also have the possibility of layoffs. Alibaba's local life service business was exposed to the news of large-scale layoffs in the early days, and Interface News reported that the layoffs will involve almost all business lines of Ele.me, and the employees of regional branches are no exception, but do not involve third-party riders. However, shortly after the rumors of layoffs appeared, Ele.me carried out an official rebuttal, saying that there was no layoff plan and a clear plan for the next step of development.

ByteDance's wave of layoffs has continued since the middle of last year: first the vigorous education business group affected by the "double reduction policy", then the commercialization, games and other business lines, and at the end of last year, it was exploded to streamline and lay off the talent development center on a large scale, and even functional positions such as HR were not spared.

What's more, after entering 2022, this wave of layoffs does not seem to stop.

According to the Internet industry personnel flow survey released by Zhaopin a few days ago, 49.9% of the respondents said that their companies have laid off employees, nearly half. And the report also sends a disturbing signal: the layoffs are proportional to the scale of the enterprise, that is to say, the head of the Internet factory lays the most brutal layoffs.

Among them, more than 58% of the respondents of Internet companies with a scale of more than 10,000 people said that their companies have layoff plans; 50.3% of employees of medium- and large-scale Internet companies (1,000-9999 people) said that the proportion of layoffs in their own companies in the past year is much higher than that of other industries and enterprises of the same size.

All in all, the myth of the Internet's wealth creation is gone, and young people with dreams to squeeze their scalps into the Internet factory have felt a bone-chilling chill this winter.

In the view of the Institute of Value, after years of sustained prosperity, it is inevitable that Internet manufacturers will come to the step of strategic contraction and layoffs - this is both to prepare for the future and to repay debts for the blind expansion of the past.

On the one hand, as of now, the business sectors that have been rumored to lay off employees in the Internet giants have two characteristics: they are not the main business, and they are all businesses that are seriously affected by external factors, such as ByteDance's vigorous education business and Baidu's live broadcast business.

To put it another way, we don't need to regard the layoffs of the giants as "apocalyptic prelude", they are nothing more than to make up for the financial holes left by blind expansion in the past, while concentrating existing resources and talents to exert efforts on the main business and new businesses that still have room for growth in the future. In fact, the giants' main business - Tencent's games, social networking, Ali, JD.com's e-commerce, Baidu's search can still play.

On the other hand, with the depletion of traffic dividends and the end of the growth myth of the mobile Internet, Internet giants need to bid farewell to the old cliché of barbaric growth and staking, and begin to take the benign development road of cost reduction and efficiency increase.

By cutting off marginal business units and streamlining the organizational structure, the Internet giant has also completed a round of talent screening, and will rely on higher quality teams to improve efficiency and reduce operating costs in the future.

The most direct evidence is that Tencent, Ali and other big manufacturers are optimizing their teams while increasing various welfare systems to firmly tie up existing talents: Alibaba launched the "Warm Heart Plan" in December last year, which included extended maternity leave, new parental leave, 20 days of full-pay long-term service leave, and upgrading a number of employee benefits; a month before Ali launched the "Warm Heart Plan", Tencent proposed an "early retirement" policy that excited Internet people to upgrade employees' career milestone benefits.

However, for the workers who still want to squeeze into large factories, it is an indisputable fact that the window of opportunity is narrowing and the entry threshold is rising.

Second, invest in the door

In the view of the Value Institute, strategic contraction is not only reflected in layoffs and cutting off side businesses, but also the contraction of investment territory is also the trend of the times - after all, in addition to considering the capital situation, it is also necessary to deal with an increasingly stringent regulatory system.

The most obvious example is Tencent's reduction in JD.com and its initiative to cut its huge investment territory.

At the end of December last year, Tencent announced that it would reduce its stake in JD.com in the form of dividends, and would issue about 460 million shares of JD.com to shareholders. After the reduction, Tencent's shareholding in JD.com fell from the original 17% to 2.3%, retiring from the position of the largest shareholder. At the same time, Tencent President Martin Lau also retired from jd.com's board of directors.

You know, this "capital marriage" that began in 2014 is one of the largest and most lucrative investments in Tencent's history, and even reshaped Tencent's investment strategy in a sense - before investing in JD.com, Tencent has been reluctant to give up its plan to do e-commerce in person, trying to directly break the wrist with Ali; and after investing in JD.com, Tencent's investment strategy has become more open, and it is more willing to support new players in areas that it is not familiar with and is not good at.

Ma Huateng said bluntly in an interview in 2015:

"Previously in the instinct of distrust, Tencent wanted to do all its projects by itself. But now, we're focused on social platforms and content collection, and the rest is up to our partners. Equal to our half-life, all given to partners. ”

Tencent's decision to reduce its holdings in JD.com was not easy, but taking this step in the end highlighted Tencent's determination to turn the wheel and the impact of regulatory policies on the investment strategies of Internet giants.

On the one hand, anti-monopoly policies are becoming stricter, and giants such as Tencent, Ali, and Meituan are all the objects of key supervision by regulatory authorities. In the first half of last year, Alibaba received the highest ever fine of 18.2 billion yuan for suspected monopoly of two choices, which was definitely a wake-up call for Tencent.

Although Tencent has not personally started to do e-commerce, but in its investment territory, as well as WeChat, a huge ecosystem of e-commerce platforms, but there are too many: in addition to the two giants of JD.com and Pinduoduo, there are vertical e-commerce platforms such as Vipshop, as well as deeply bound to the e-commerce industry, there are Zan and Weimob, behind which there are Tencent's figures.

With the lesson of Ali, Tencent's precautions are completely understandable.

On the other hand, under the regulatory trend of cracking down on disorderly expansion, it is certainly not only Tencent that is affected, but all Internet giants need to readjust their investment strategies according to the policy direction.

The Value Institute believes that the era of "startups either join Tencent or sell themselves to Alibaba" may be gone, and the investment methods of Internet giants in various tracks through investment and mergers and acquisitions may also have to be stopped. Instead, there will be a more rational and focused investment strategy for its own business.

Take ByteDance as an example. According to Sixlens statistics, in the year ending in June 2021, there were 65 ByteDance-related investment and mergers and acquisitions, mainly covering the content industry, accounting for 32.3%. Including self-media operations, digital copyright, MCN institutions, etc. and Douyin, today's headline content ecology is closely linked to the upstream and downstream enterprises of the content industry, is the focus of Byte investment and mergers and acquisitions.

Internet giants please answer 2022: layoffs, door-cutting, opening, sinking, going to sea, technology

(Image by Sixlens)

It is foreseeable that in the coming year, Internet giants such as Tencent, Alibaba, ByteDance, and Meituan will still not stop investing, but they will become more targeted and more restrained. This is of course also a whole new challenge for startups that are eager to gain the favor of the giants.

3. Openness and alliance

In addition to antitrust, interconnection is also a major intervention imposed by the policy layer on the Internet giants. However, unlike antitrust, where the pros and cons are clear, the current stage of interconnection is like a "Schrödinger's cat" for the head Internet company: no one can determine whether it is good or bad until the barriers are completely broken.

The optimistic side believes that interconnection can break the monopoly of traffic on some platforms, reshape the Internet competition pattern, and create a more open competitive environment, which is a good thing for the entire industry and most enterprises. Among the giants, Ali, who has the most prominent traffic anxiety, will undoubtedly support this view. The media also broke the news that Taobao and Tmall accessed WeChat Pay for the first time, which was regarded as a "meeting gift" given by Ali to Tencent. Daniel Zhang more publicly expressed his support for connectivity, calling the move "very necessary."

However, the negative side will believe that interconnection means a large number of access to off-site links, which will bring greater management difficulties to some platforms. Martin Lau has publicly stated that platform interoperability faces many "practical problems":

"Resource-rich platforms can provide a lot of subsidies, will this affect the WeChat platform store merchants? For counterfeiting, piracy and other issues on other platforms, does the WeChat team have the power to investigate and deal with them? All in all, interoperability between platforms is a very complex issue that takes time to discuss and implement step by step. ”

Daniel Zhang and Martin Lau are analyzing the impact of interconnection from the perspective of their own companies, and their ultimate appeal is to protect their own rights and interests as much as possible, which is understandable. From a neutral point of view, interconnection is an irreversible trend, but in actual operation, there are indeed many details that need to be run-in, and it should not be rushed.

In the short term, if you want to achieve the great integration of Internet giants: such as Taobao Tmall shopping links fully access to WeChat, QQ ecology, or WeChat public accounts stationed in Baidu search content library, or Douyin, Kuaishou mutual stationing on each other's platforms, etc., it is not realistic. Each platform also needs more time to finalize the opening and management rules, and of course, it also needs time to make a plan for the decline in user experience that may be brought about by the interconnection.

But what is certain is that under the guidance of the policy, the giants who see profit opportunities will move further towards interconnection – the essence behind it is nothing more than joint operations, taking what they need, and providing support for their own business.

The most prominent example is the "marriage" between Meituan and Kuaishou.

At the end of December last year, Kuaishou and Meituan announced a strategic cooperation on connectivity, and the two sides announced that they would open up content marketing, online transactions and offline performance services based on the Kuaishou open platform to provide users with a one-stop consumer experience. At present, Meituan has successively launched catering takeaway, group purchase, voucher and other services in the Kuaishou Mini Program, and will inevitably move local life services such as hotels, leisure and entertainment, transportation, and scenic spot tickets to Kuaishou one by one in the coming year.

After reaching the cooperation, Meituan has obtained the huge traffic pool of Kuaishou and the massive anchor and UGC content resources in the Kuaishou ecosystem, which may better promote its own business. Kuaishou has a more complete transaction chain and extended service scenarios, which can generate income for anchors and talents, and will also gradually connect its own e-commerce business to the main site of the MEituan and open up off-site trading scenarios.

The cooperation between Kuaishou and Meituan, which is a wanli, is believed to become a reference template for many Internet giants. In the process of interconnection, we have the opportunity to see more stories of "vertical and horizontal".

Fourth, continue to sink

If connectivity is to smash a gap in the strong walls of giants, providing them with a win-win cooperation and an opportunity to get rid of the inner volume, then the sinking market is the best opportunity for them to get out of their comfort zone and expand outward.

Whether it is Ali, JD.com, pinduoduo that does e-commerce, Douyin and Kuaishou that do short videos, Tencent that does games and social networking, or Meituan that does local life services, they all understand that the stock competition in the first- and second-tier markets will only become more and more intense, and the cost of customer acquisition will become higher and higher. The sinking market has become the focus of contention for Internet giants, but in the next year, I believe that their competition with each other will continue.

In the view of the Value Institute, the most important reason is that the sinking market, which has been focused on development by giants for many years, still has great potential and room for growth.

First of all, let's talk about the e-commerce industry that sinks most thoroughly and resolutely. In the first quarter of 2021, the total online retail sales in the country were 281 million, an increase of 29.9% year-on-year. From the sub-data point of view, rural online retail sales of 439.79 billion, although the proportion is less than that of first- and second-tier cities, but the year-on-year growth rate is as high as 35.3%, far exceeding the national average.

Behind the growth of online shopping scale, we can see the gradual cultivation of users' consumption habits and the awakening of consumer awareness - this is the result of the vigorous sinking of the three giants of Taobao, JD.com and Pinduoduo in the past few years. According to the statistics of iResearch Consulting, as of the first half of 2021, the proportion of users whose online shopping frequency is 1-3 times a week in the sinking market is the highest, recording 47.3%, and the proportion of users who shop online 4-6 times a week also reached 24.2%. Conversely, the average number of users who shop online less than once a week is only 18%.

Internet giants please answer 2022: layoffs, door-cutting, opening, sinking, going to sea, technology

(Image courtesy of iResearch)

In addition, the willingness of consumers in the sinking market to upgrade their consumption and the improvement of their income levels will provide impetus for the sinking of Internet giants. This is more evident in the game industry that Tencent values most.

Penguin Zhiku statistics show that the gap between the per capita online entertainment consumption of netizens in the sinking market and the first- and second-tier netizens is not large, among them, games are the bulk of the online consumption of users in the sinking market: the monthly per capita game consumption of sinking netizens is 62 yuan, the young users are as high as 73 yuan, and the users in first- and second-tier cities are only 87 yuan.

Buying skins, costumes, and props is the main purpose of kryptonite gold for users in the sinking market - and it is also the most proud way for goose factories to make money.

Tencent, which is well versed in this truth, will naturally not let go of the sinking market, which is a gold digging land.

Internet giants please answer 2022: layoffs, door-cutting, opening, sinking, going to sea, technology

(Image from Penguin Zhiku)

However, in the vast army of Internet sinking, there are still a few who can really stand firm and taste dividends.

Also take e-commerce as an example. Taote, Jingxi, the two e-commerce APPS for users in the sinking market, monthly active, GMV and other data have made great progress, but in terms of repurchase rate, communication effect and other aspects are not satisfactory, and the above data are very different from Pinduoduo.

The report of Aurora Big Data shows that as of the first half of 2021, Taote MAU is about 110 million, Jingxi has not yet broken 100 million, and Pinduoduo is about 540 million. In addition, 78% of Taobao's users and Pinduoduo are combined, and 89% of users overlap with Taobao. Taote and Jingxi want to break through in the future and get rid of the shadow of Pinduoduo, and finding their own differentiated advantages is the key.

Internet giants please answer 2022: layoffs, door-cutting, opening, sinking, going to sea, technology

(Image from Aurora Big Data)

In fact, the reason why Pinduoduo can dominate the sinking market is ostensibly based on low prices and social attributes - but from a deeper point of view, these two major advantages are nothing more than seizing the characteristics of sinking market users who attach importance to the cost performance of goods and the socialization of acquaintances.

Taking the successful experience of Pinduoduo and the e-commerce industry as a reference, if the Internet giant wants to win this sinking war, it also needs to adjust its strategic plan from two angles: one is to truly enter the sinking market and gain insight into the needs and consumption habits of sinking users, rather than transplanting the original expansion model; the other is to avoid repeating the old road of burning money for growth, blindly expanding for future mines.

In other words, Taobao and Jingdong cannot operate Taote and Jingxi with the concept of "selling goods from the city to the village", nor can they copy the successful experience of Pinduoduo, but should truly integrate into the environment of the sinking market, explore the communication rules of acquaintance society and the online shopping preferences of sinking users.

This principle is also applicable to Tencent's games, Meituan's local life services, and Didi's online ride-hailing business.

Fifth, go to sea

In addition to sinking, there is another major way for Internet giants to find new additions: going to sea.

Since the domestic mobile Internet market has become very fierce, and most markets have entered the stage of stock competition, many industries have the need to find growth overseas.

The e-commerce industry, affected by the epidemic, the growth of offline retail consumption in overseas markets has slowed down, and e-commerce has ushered in a wave of outbreaks, as exemplified by the user growth of Amazon, AliExpress and Brazil Online in the past two years. Ali has also long had a layout, through Lazada and other subsidiaries to force cross-border e-commerce. Increasing support for overseas markets in the new year is also unexpected.

The consumer electronics industry, represented by smart phones, is facing the dilemma of slowing down the growth of the domestic market. According to the statistics of the Prospective Industry Research Institute, since 2017, the domestic smartphone market shipments have been in a negative growth state, and the year-on-year decline in 2020 has expanded to 20.8%.

In this context, smartphone manufacturers have become a must-do problem.

Internet giants please answer 2022: layoffs, door-cutting, opening, sinking, going to sea, technology

(Image from Prospective Industry Research Institute)

In the third quarter of last year, Xiaomi ranked third among global smartphone manufacturers with a market share of 13.4%, which is a certain distance from Samsung's 20.8% and Apple's 15.2%, but it is already a top-notch presence in domestic brands. According to Canalys' forecast, the global smartphone market will ship about 1.32 billion units in 2021, an increase of 6.1% year-on-year, and the top three market share are Samsung, Apple and Xiaomi. Although the final data has not yet been released, Canalys' prediction still gives Xiaomi a shot in the arm.

The situation in the pan-entertainment social industry is similar to that of consumer electronics, and even the hot short videos have slowed down. CNNIC's report shows that as of the first half of 2021, the scale of domestic short video users was 888 million, an increase of 14.4 million over December 2020, and the growth rate fell sharply.

Fortunately, the road to the sea of the head short video platform is still relatively smooth. As of September 27 last year, ByteDance's Tik Tok has exceeded the 1 billion mark in its global monthly active activity. This is just four years since the birth of Tik Tok. In terms of horizontal comparison, Tik Tok spends about half of the time spent living a billion a month, about half of Facebook and YouTube, 3 years faster than WeChat and Instagram, and even less than a fraction of Alipay (15 years).

In 2022, Internet manufacturers will accelerate the pace of going overseas and seize more market share through targeted layouts. The main work needs to focus on the following aspects.

The first is to adjust the internal organizational structure and provide more funds and resources for overseas business.

The typical representative is Alibaba, which recently underwent a round of organizational restructuring. In early December, Alibaba announced that Jiang Fan, as the group's president, will lead the two overseas business units of AliExpress and International Trade, as well as subsidiaries such as Lazada, to form an overseas digital business segment.

As the helmsman of Taobao, Jiang Fan has made a lot of hard contributions to Ali in the past seven years, and even the public opinion crisis that has been raging in 2020 has not had any substantial impact on Jiang Fan's position within Ali. This time transferred to the overseas business department, Daniel Zhang also did not hesitate to praise Jiang Fan, as well as expectations.

"I look forward to Jiang Fan leading the team to achieve more innovation in the development of overseas markets."

Since the outbreak of the epidemic, online shopping in North America, Europe and Latin America has ushered in an outbreak, and the surge in users of online e-commerce platforms in Amazon, Lazada and Brazil is the best evidence. At this time, Ali let Jiang Fan take command and strengthen the development of overseas markets, which is the right time.

Second, we must pay attention to avoiding risks such as policies and epidemics, make alternative plans, and adhere to the red line.

Take policy risks, for example. As we all know, the antitrust and information security regulatory policies in the United States and Europe are more stringent than in China. Statista statistics show that the European Commission's penalties against big tech companies have increased exponentially over the past decade, with Google, Microsoft and others receiving a single fine of more than 4 billion euros. In contrast, Ali's fines last year dwarfed each other.

The good news is that compared with Google and Microsoft, the share of domestic Internet giants in overseas markets is far from reaching the level of monopoly. But paying attention to information security supervision and ensuring the local preservation of information is also a very important bottom line - otherwise, Didi is the best negative example.

Third, to form positive cash flow, this requires them to focus on the main business that has already gained a foothold, open up new business lines in overseas markets, and explore ways to increase revenue.

Among them, Tik Tok's constantly tinkering with e-commerce, takeaway and other businesses is the best example. According to the plans revealed in an interview by the co-founder of VDC, an American internet celebrity restaurant operator partner of Tik Tok, VDC and Tik Tok plan to cooperate in the first phase of opening 300 takeaway stations, which are expected to expand to 1,000 by the end of this year. According to the data provided by VDC, during the epidemic, the order volume of online takeaway platforms in the United States has surged, and Tik Tok has the advantages of traffic and content promotion, which is believed to provide great help for the takeaway business.

All in all, the temptation to go to sea for Internet giants is getting bigger and bigger. Going out and grabbing business with Amazon, Google, and Facebook is the trend of the times.

Sixth, technological upgrading

In the previous annual review series, it was said that the main reason for the decline in the growth rate of Internet manufacturers in the past year was the failure of traffic models and the rise of hard technology.

In this context, technological upgrading will inevitably become the focus of the Internet giant in the next year. However, the direction of the giants may be slightly different: some people need to continue to strengthen their competitive advantages in areas where they are good at or have already made achievements, some people need to make up for the loopholes in the existing development model through technological upgrading, and some people need to cross over to new fields and try to open up new growth points through technological upgrading.

The first type of enterprise, of course, is the two giants alibaba and tencent. Taking Ali as an example, the current direction of technological development is very clear: everything is going to the cloud.

There is no doubt that Alibaba is currently the cloud computing provider with the strongest comprehensive strength and the highest market share in China, and Alibaba Cloud is also the most promising to become Ali's revenue growth engine in the next year. According to the latest financial report, Alibaba Cloud's revenue in the second quarter of fiscal 2022 (July-September 2021) was 20.007 billion, an increase of 33% year-on-year, and the adjusted EBITA profit was 396 million, which not only made a significant leap forward from the loss of 567 million yuan in the same period last year, but also contrasted with Ali's net profit of 39% year-on-year decline in the current quarter.

Looking back at the past three quarters, Alibaba Cloud's revenue has maintained a stable year-on-year growth rate, and its annual revenue in fiscal 2021 has also exceeded 60 billion. While revenue continues to grow, Alibaba Cloud's share advantage has become more unshakable. According to a Canalys report, Alibaba Cloud's share of China's public cloud market reached 40% as of the first quarter of 2021, almost double that of Tencent Cloud (11%) and HUAWEI CLOUD (11%). Even if you broaden your vision to the global market, Alibaba Cloud is only lagging behind Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, ranking fourth.

Internet giants please answer 2022: layoffs, door-cutting, opening, sinking, going to sea, technology

(Image courtesy of Canalys)

According to the data previously released by Ali, the research and development investment in the past few years has remained at the level of 100 billion, and Alibaba Cloud occupies a large share. The rise of the concept of metacosmity, as well as the development of smart cities and digital industries, has not only increased the demand for cloud computing, but also put forward higher requirements for cloud technology. In this context, Alibaba's technology research and development investment is expected to be further upgraded in order to continue to consolidate Alibaba Cloud's dominance.

As for the latter two kinds of enterprises, Meituan and Xiaomi are prominent representatives: the former is reducing labor costs and improving operational efficiency by strengthening the research and development and upgrading of technologies such as unmanned distribution and intelligent distribution systems; the latter, in addition to tinkering with self-developed chips, also tries to seize the technical outlet of intelligent driving and new energy vehicles.

In the technology research and development of unmanned distribution, Meituan adopts the strategy of self-research + investment. Data from Sixlens also shows that in the 12 months until June 2021, Meituan has made a number of investments in the commercial robot industry, including delivery robots, restaurant robots, etc., and the investment targets include star start-ups such as Mo mo Zhixing and Purdue Robot.

Especially the latter, the number of patents currently applied for is more than 200, more than half of which are invention patents, and have made great achievements in high-tech fields such as delivery robots, food delivery robots, indoor positioning, and distributed scheduling. After receiving the investment of Meituan, the two sides will share resources in research and development and testing, which is a win-win transaction.

Xiaomi side, some time ago by the media exposure of the Xiaomi MIX 5 is reported to be equipped with a self-developed chip surging C2, is expected to be officially launched in the second quarter of this year. Seven years after the core, Xiaomi's achievements seem to be erratic. But I believe that Lei Jun, who recently shouted out the slogan of benchmarking Apple in a high-profile manner, will not hit his own face so quickly: if he wants to catch up with Apple in the high-end market, the chip is a key link that cannot be bypassed, and Xiaomi will not be stingy in investment in technology.

Vii. Write at the end

Judging from the development of the past year, the current technology industry seems to have entered the "VUCA era".

VUCA corresponds to four words: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous, originally coined by the U.S. military in the 1990s to describe an increasingly unstable, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, and multilateral world since the end of the Cold War, a term used by the media after 9/11 to describe a chaotic, rapidly changing business environment.

For technology companies, this is also a classic "VUCA" moment: opportunities and challenges coexist, which can be described as the best and the worst.

But let's not forget the saying: darkness before dawn is always the hardest thing to endure.

Although the Internet giants led by Ali and Tencent have encountered a crisis, they have also gained an opportunity to sweep away the accumulated shortcomings and return to rational development. Whether it is through strategic contraction, adjustment of investment strategies to reorganize resources, or through technological reforms and offensive sinking markets to find new increments, it is certain that the giants are not sitting still.

Winter will always pass, and the one who laughs to the end is the real winner. In the long run, squatting is only to jump higher, and the future of the Internet industry is still worth looking forward to.

Author: Hernanderz; Public account: Institute of Value (jiazhiyanjiusuo)

Original link: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/L7PqX4TV4SKy1s-5ZXT1qA

This article is published by @Value Institute with permission from Everyone is a Product Manager, and reproduction without permission is prohibited

The title image is from Unsplash and is based on the CC0 protocol

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