The source | Tech Planet
| Chen Qiaohui
Following the investment in Nezha Automobile and the layout of new energy vehicles, in less than a year, 360 has extended its business tentacles to the "meta-universe" where the limelight is flourishing.
Tech Planet exclusively learned that 360 recently launched a meta-universe product "N World". According to reports, the "N world" is a new generation of interest metaverse, which is composed of "worlds of interest" one by one, and everyone can create their own world. Users can create topics of interest, interactive and immersive voice play, identity cards, and private exclusive territories.
According to people close to 360, the internal product attaches more importance to it, and gives the "N world" worth tens of millions of yuan of "n.cn" domain name as the official website.
This is not the first time that Zhou Hongyi has entered the meta-universe. At the end of 2021, Zhou Hongyi, chairman of 360 Group, said in an interview with the media: In fact, "Hua Pepper" has long made products similar to the meta-universe, but it is not particularly successful.
Zhou Hongyi once again laid out the metaverse, which showed that he was prepared. For the metaverse, Zhou Hongyi believes: "The metacosm is the highest realm of digitization, and it should be divided into two. Using the wrong direction is not good, and using the right direction is still promising. ”
2021 is the first year of the so-called meta-universe, at this time, Byte spent a huge amount of money to acquire VR equipment manufacturer PICO to build the underlying facilities of the meta-universe; Tencent set up an XR team internally; Baidu launched the "Xilang" app. As a new outlet in the meta-universe, 360 obviously does not want to miss it.
In recent years, 360 is not only chasing the outlet of the meta-universe, new cars, financial technology, voice chat, grass e-commerce, smart phones, etc. have 360 figures, but the business in these areas is not too well known to outsiders, and some businesses have silently withdrawn from the market.
This time, 360, who is still tired on the road to chasing the wind, can he get the results he wants?
Can meta-universes be a good business for 360?
"The challenge of the metacosm is essentially a challenge of digital security", in Zhou Hongyi's view, digitalization can make the entire human society more "smart", and may also make security more "vulnerable".
Therefore, 360 takes network security as an opportunity to cut into the metaverse. A product manager of 360 told Tech Planet: "Metacostem security is a new industry, 360 through network security to enter the metacosm will be a fast and effective method, and the competitive pressure will not be too much", at the beginning of this year, 360 has added "meta-universe security" positions.
However, 360 is not limited to this, but also wants to lay out the metaverse ecology in the mode of "metaverse socialization".
Recently, a social product called "N World" has caught fire in the product circle, and after the Experience of Tech Planet, it was found that this is a social platform that focuses on the metaverse of interest, and the gameplay is similar to the foreign voice chat product "discord".
Users can add channels of interest in "N-worlds", and channels are defined as metaverse worlds. After joining, you can participate in chats in the channel, including but not limited to voice, text, etc., and enjoy the same frequency immersive experience of multiple people. Users can also create their own channels, that is, private exclusive territory, and invite other users to join the channel as residents.
In addition, in the "N world", users can also view the official recommended channels through the "Discover" page, mainly games, life, funny and literature. It also supports adding like-minded friends.
As a social product similar to "discord", this redefines group social with the help of the concept of metaverse, connects users and channels with interest as a link, and realizes the concept of multiverse.
For 360, the "N world" that dominates the concept of the metaverse may be a good choice. Previously, the official Discord server users of "Original God" reached 800,000, making "Discord" famous in China. Tencent, as a social brother in China, has also launched 3 similar products, namely "Q Dimension", "NokNok" and "QQ Channel".
A Product Manager of Tencent told Tech Planet that the launch of NokNok revealed that Tencent wants to create a blockbuster product similar to "Discord", with games and social networking as a backer, tencent's "Discord" may not be impossible.
Doing meta-universe social products, for 360, which is not dominant in social and games, it has chosen another development route, that is, to obtain users on various channels, and to drive the community atmosphere and maintain the operation of the channel in the form of UGC as the main form of content output.
Tech Planet learned through chatting with some users in the channel that most of them come from channels such as QQ group, Tieba, B station and TapTap, which shows that 360 chooses to actively obtain the first batch of loyal users on the channel, and then through this group of loyal users to lead new users to join and achieve user growth.
A person close to 360 told Tech Planet that 360 attaches great importance to this product and has now launched "n.cn" as the official website for "N World". A domain name merchant said that the price of such single-letter domain names is above the level of tens of millions, especially the "n.cn" is in line with the brand of the N world, and it is more and more obvious that 360 pays attention to the "N world".
Zhou Hongyi led 360 to chase those wind outlets
In an interview with the media, Zhou Hongyi once said: I am a very real, constantly struggling strivers. Zhou Hongyi led 360 to chase under the wind outlet in the hope of success.
As early as 2011, Apple 4S became popular in the world, and many smart phone startups have emerged in the domestic mobile phone market, including today's Xiaomi, VIVO, OPPO and so on.
In the case of a red sea in the mobile phone market, 360 also announced that it would do mobile phones, and Zhou Hongyi even said that he would add a blockage to the mobile phone circle, and released a cruel word saying that "no one can stop my determination to make mobile phones." Subsequently, in 2012, 360 announced that it would cooperate with Huawei to launch the first 360 special supply machine , Huawei Shine.
But its ambitions did not stop there, and then 360 announced a strategic investment in Coolpad, officially entered the field of smartphones, and announced the mobile phone brand "Qiku" in 2015.
However, by this time, the time for 360 to enter the game was already late. In 2016, The country has formed a "Huami OV Meizu" of the full force pattern, for 360 mobile phones, the difficulty of grabbing market share continues to increase, Youdao reported that the loss of 360 mobile phones in 2016 was as high as 800 million yuan.
In 2019, Phoenix.com Technology quoted a number of 360 people as saying that its mobile phone business had been suspended. 360 officials said: Mobile phone business is not completely suspended, just slowed down. In this regard, 360 has come to an end in the outlet of chasing smartphones.
In 2016, with the rise of live broadcasting platforms such as Douyu and Huya, a strong wind of live broadcasting was blown in the Internet industry.
Under the live broadcast outlet, the peppercorn live broadcast was immediately launched, as a 360 investment in the peppercorn live broadcast, Zhou Hongyi often stood for it, especially when Zhou Hongyi watched the 360 mobile phone conference site, on the way home, the BMW 730 suddenly began to smoke and spontaneous combustion, Zhou Hongyi took out his mobile phone to open the pepper for live broadcasting, which caused a hot discussion on the Internet.
And Zhou Hongyi finally kept the clouds open to see the moon. In 2021, Huafang Group Company, the main operator of Huajiao Live and six rooms, submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to make a final sprint for the listing.
However, the prospectus shows that from 2019 to the first eight months of 2021, the company's revenue growth rate was 42.05%, 30.1% and 25.21% year-on-year, showing a downward trend, and the net loss in 2020 exceeded 1.5 billion. Although the final result is not particularly significant, online live broadcasting has also become one of the few outlets that Zhou Hongyi has chased.
Also in 2016, the financial outlet of the Internet also blew up. Zhou Hongyi, who once declared that he would not do Internet financial business, also officially set foot in finance. In that year, 360 invested in the Internet Financial Assets (Xixian New Area) Trading Center, obtained a license from the Gold Exchange, and incubated 360 Finance.
However, with the increasing supervision, there is a license risk in 360 Financial's loan assistance business, so 360 spent 1.281 billion yuan to acquire a total of 30% of the shares of the original five shareholders of Tianjin Jincheng Bank, becoming the largest shareholder of Jincheng Bank. For a time, the financial business became Zhou Hongyi's cash cow.
Time to 2021, the outlet of new energy vehicles has risen strongly, the sound wave of domestic car manufacturing is higher than a wave, Xiaomi, Baidu, Didi, etc. have announced car manufacturing, as 360, which has been chasing on the outlet, obviously does not want to miss. In October 2021, 360 plans to invest 2.9 billion yuan in its own funds to invest in Hezhong New Energy Automobile Co., Ltd. (Nezha Automobile).
Zhou Hongyi said that smart cars are expected to become the largest intelligent terminal after computers and mobile phones, and the Internet of Vehicles will also become the next super entrance after the mobile Internet.
Recently, 360 Automotive Safety Guard was deployed on the new Nezha Automobile U, which is the first time that 360 Vehicle Networking Security Products have "boarded the car", and 360 has also taken the first step in the mass production of Vehicle Networking products. And in the first quarter of 2022, Nezha Automobile sales ranked third, second only to Xiaopeng and Ideal Automobile.
Perhaps, riding on the shareholder wind of "Nezha Automobile", 360 can further expand its own security business and extend it to other car companies, further opening up the market for intelligent networked vehicles.
In addition to the above several big outlets, 360 has also made moves in a number of small vents, such as launching "light selection" in the field of grass planting e-commerce and creating its own mini program ecology.
In summary, it is not difficult to see that 360 has always been chasing the wind and carrying out investment and layout of new businesses. As a veteran Internet company, according to the 2020 annual financial report, the emerging business has grown significantly, helping 360 to continuously optimize its revenue structure.
But unfortunately, 360 has not yet created a national-level product that can match WeChat, Alipay and other Apps, on the one hand, because 360 has missed the window period on some important outlets, such as failing to get the admission ticket of the smart phone, and those who can grasp the outlet, due to the failure to continue to expand the track, can only be partial to the corner in the end.
The outlet is gradually stopping, how will the 360 transformation "toss" out new tricks?
As the Internet industry enters the cold winter in 2021, layoffs and business reduction have become the new normal of the Internet industry. Internet companies have proposed "cost reduction and efficiency increase" and "de-fattening and increasing", which means that the previous way of playing through burning money to expand to seize the new outlet will come to an end.
When the outlet gradually stopped, to prevent capital from expanding and strengthening, and to the background of the suspension of burning money, major Internet companies began to implement the strategy of refined operation, focusing on maintaining the advantages of their main business, but only in some areas of small-scale exploration, 360 is no exception.
Tech Planet found that since 2021, 360's exploration and actions in new businesses have decreased significantly compared to before 2020. After 2021, in addition to new actions in car building and meta-universe, in other aspects, 360 is mainly developing new tool-side business, such as the travel tool "Naughty Orange Travel", the search tool "Tomato Quick Search" and the emotion recording tool "Moments".
For a large company, these are still in the early stages of business, obviously not enough to support the company's future, 360 is also adjusting, and clarify the future direction of development.
In January 2022, Zhou Hongyi, founder of 360 Group, sent an internal letter to all employees, announcing that 360 will comprehensively transform digital security companies and serve the digital transformation of governments and traditional enterprises. Zhou Hongyi said that Internet products such as 360 Security Guard should provide free security services and SaaS services for small and medium-sized enterprises, and government and enterprise security and big data intelligent services and smart life business should provide paid services for the B-side.
360 chose to transform digital security, and it is interesting that the biggest competitor on this track is Qianxin, which was previously separated from 360.
On the way to the wind outlet, although 360 failed to run out of the national application products, but there are also many gains, compared to those early Internet players who silently withdrew from the public vision, the 360 that constantly "tossed" is also lucky.