The American writer Thoreau wrote about spring in Walden, when he said:
The arrival of spring is like the creation of the universe in chaos, like the realization of the Golden Age.
On March 13, 2022, both Chengdu and Guilin, where I had just arrived on a business trip, were filled with the cheerful atmosphere of early summer. On Sundays, I interacted frequently in several WeChat groups on weekdays, but revealed a certain uneasiness, and went to Weibo, which was not much opened on weekdays, to take a look at the hot search.
▲Weibo hot search at 18:00 pm on March 13, 2022.
The comfortable warm sun in March and the cheerful atmosphere of rushing towards summer, on March 13, 2022, we who are experiencing all this suddenly have a feeling that is incompatible with spring.
Why does the title say 2024?
From 2013 to 2015, it was in the starting period of automotive self-media, and more than 90% of the head automotive self-media were established from then on. Then in the three-year outbreak period from 2016 to 2018, more than 20,000 automotive self-media active on major platforms at the peak emerged from then on. (From the "Auto Self-Media, Lying Earned In The Year, And Now Lying Dead" published on the Driver's Pie on May 31, 2019)
2024 is almost the tenth anniversary of the development of automotive self-media. And 2025, based on the information I have in my hands, will be a promising "new era" in the history of the development of the automotive industry.
In a clear vision for the future, Mercedes-Benz expects electric and hybrid vehicles to account for 50% of its car sales by 2025; last week, when I interviewed Bai Li, GM's global executive vice president and president of GM China, he revealed that "I hope that in 2025, GM can achieve a production capacity of 1 million electric vehicles in the Chinese market";
As early as 2007, when the BYD F6 rolled off the production line, Wang Chuanfu said that "BYD will become the first in China in 2015, and it will be the first in the world in 2025", and in 2021, BYD's new energy models will sell more than 600,000 vehicles, which has become "China's first" for 9 consecutive years; in 2021, the sales volume will exceed 1.28 million and create a record high, and its goal is "4 million sales in 2025, and new energy accounts for more than 80%".
The "New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan (2021-2035)" proposes relatively conservatively that by 2025, the sales volume of new energy vehicles will reach about 20% of the total sales of new vehicles.
So what I'm thinking about is:
Automotive self-media, who can survive the first decade of their own development, come to 2024, and be fully prepared to witness the milestone year of 2025 in the industry?
Back to the peak of the figures, the data I got in 2019, "more than 20,000 auto self-media" is obviously a thing of the past. According to our observation, in 2021, there will not be more than 300 automotive industry self-media in China that can maintain continuous output. Among them, there will be no more than 200 companies with original capabilities and sustained and stable output. (This data is based on our statistics on the number of active authors on the list of major automotive vertical platforms in 2021, and does not represent an authoritative number)
From 20,000 to 200, the earliest robot teams that made a living by eating platform subsidies and washing manuscripts almost disappeared after the subsidies disappeared. And from the perspective of the stock prices of major platforms,
At that time, the platform generously threw money, the robot wrote tens of thousands of monthly income, and the auto self-media was acquired to realize more than 100 million, which is not only gone in retrospect at the present, but also shows a magical taste.
Who will live to 2024? I can't give a definitive answer to this question. But I've been summarizing since at least 2019.
Who certainly can't survive?
1. Non-original media that rely on subsidies to eat platform dividends. This is also the vast majority of the 20,000 homes that have fallen. With the major platforms setting a daily posting ceiling and improving the protection mechanism for originality, this type of media has almost died. (Relying on writing and publishing robots for a living, itself is not well-known in the industry, so everyone feels not big.) ）
2, relying on "a paper media fell, 10 self-media people stood up" and the hastily entered the salesman type auto self-media should feel the taste of winter from 2020. If there are few personnel, it may be okay to rely on a network of connections to participate in online activities and regional activities to get some writing fees to make a living; if there are a few more personnel, with the "self-media" mechanism such a mechanism for management to bear the profit and loss, it should start laying off employees as early as 2021, and from continuous updates to irregular updates or even break changes. The frequency of updates tends to slow down until it is broken, which almost indicates the demise of an automotive self-media.
3, for the "content update" can say a few words, from "daily update" to "regular update" to "irregular update", is the outside world can know the most intuitive window of the car self-media operation. This is more realistic than financial statements. Because "updating" means the ability, strength, and drive of content output.
4. Automotive self-media that rely on drafts for a living and cannot provide original value. If it is not a portal platform, the media that throws away the manuscript link within a minute after the manufacturer's activity will become more and more worthless - especially when the manufacturer's brand has changed to a user-based enterprise and a fan-based enterprise, and a manufacturer with a much larger number of fans than you should care about some websites with less than double digits of daily activity?
5. Automotive self-media that lives by experience and is stubborn and unable to complete the transformation. We have always believed that graphics and texts will never lose their value, and only those that lose value are those that cannot produce value to the audience. The same goes for videos. In the vertical field of automobiles, the era of flood irrigation with large flows has ended, whether it is graphics or videos, professional ceilings are rising, and professional moats are also widening. The flow of water competes for the lead, relying on endlessly. The quality of the original content that continues to be produced is directly proportional to the investment in money. At this level, it is not a desperate decision, but an endurance to continue to run in the right direction. On the real content track, the core is experience rather than experience, this is a marathon, not a 100-meter hurdles.
6. Self-media that rely on malicious negativity to survive. After "black public relations" has been characterized by the Cyberspace Administration of China and entered the scope of the public security organs, the auto self-media that rely on malicious negative reports for a living have obviously decreased a lot. The recent incident of Extreme Krypton Automobile issuing a lawyer's letter to a second-hand car Internet celebrity also provided a reference for the industry on the eve of 3.15: deliberately fabricating or distorting facts and sensationalism In this era of "everyone is not happy", companies may choose to be tough instead of calming people.
Going back to the outlooks and predictions we've made about automotive media since 2014, we can draw conclusions from them:
When the industry peaks, it is not far from decline.
▲ Casually looking for it, the driving party has published some observations on auto media and self-media in the past 8 years. If you are interested, you can use the "Article Search" function to view it within your account.
It can be said that under the background of the epidemic and the lack of core, the cost that the entire automotive industry can give to the self-media has slipped from the peak, and most of the mediocre self-media is like playing werewolf killing, and no one knows who will be pointed out after the dawn please open your eyes.
So, in fact, all the auto media can do is to get themselves out of mediocrity.
I myself was involved in writing most of the automotive media observation articles of the Driver's School, and around the beginning of our founding in March 2014, I began to write about the demise of the automotive version of Metropolis Daily.
As a media to "write the media", not only has no traffic, but also offended many people. But why have I been doing this for 8 years?
Because I have the desire to talk.
If a self-proclaimed creator cannot pick up a pen in his hand to record the times he is familiar with, I cannot imagine what valuable content he can create. Observing and recording the development process of media, automotive media, and automotive self-media itself, thinking about and summarizing gains and losses, is also one of the most valuable parts I have learned from this industry.
Prejudgment, on the other hand, is a kind of self-examination. Just as we make predictions about new car sales – predictions are not made to prove that we are right, but to verify that we are not correct. It is the results that exceed our predictions that give us the opportunity to summarize and grow.
With the birth and development of automotive self-media, to this day, I have not only seen the blooming and withering of those flowers, but I have also observed and made records and predictions about its growth. The conclusion is never the value to me, the process is.
Of course, if some conclusions or judgments can inspire my colleagues in the industry, if, as I prefer to romantic imagination, on a lonely night, a creator who is self-doubting sees me say that after I say "the tide recedes, the value returns", he can see the shining point of value in his body and continue to run, I am willing to accompany him with words.
I understand that this power is very insignificant under the long creative hardships. Just as we, as automotive self-media itself, are very insignificant in the rolling torrent of industry progress.
But that doesn't stop us from living into even the slightest light.
So, auto self-media, who can live to 2024? At the beginning of the chapter, I wrote down eight words from the Tao Te Ching in my notebook —
The hurricane passed through the post, and the grass remained.
Zweig said, "What is alive will eventually triumph over what is not... If a work can arouse a person's enthusiasm, even if it is to arouse a person's enthusiasm, it is enough - because a passion itself stimulates creativity. ”
When a creator grows up with a fear of mediocrity, awe of the unknown, and a lack of knowledge, these uncomfortable experiences are the embodiment of vitality.
Going back to the beginning of the article, someone summed up the era we were in as the VUCA era - volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, and the anxiety I got on the Internet disappeared in the process of writing this article, replaced by a firmness, conviction, simplicity and clarity.
Independent thinking and summing up is itself the best way to combat anxiety, and those throbbing for the future and the energy generated based on "believing" are gifts to the creator.
May we in the VUCA era live out a certain certain conviction of our own.
Wen | Zhao Xiaocha
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