Producer|New Product Strategy (formerly NBS New Product Strategy)
Author|Wu Wenwu
Another tear of the times!
Recently, some netizens found that the Tianya community website and APP could not be opened. Previously, Tianya Community issued an announcement that it would undergo technical upgrades and data reconstruction in the near future, during which the platform would not be accessible.
The website of the new product strategy Caiguan to visit Tianya community can no longer be opened, open the Tianya community APP, display: "no data obtained, request refresh", after clicking the refresh button, it still cannot be accessed normally.
The topic of "Tianya community can no longer be opened" soon became a hot search, netizens set off a "wave of mourning" on social platforms, and some netizens commented: Tianya is closed, just around the corner, never again!
01 The pinnacle of the world
Most young people today do not know what the Tianya community is, but for the 70s, 80s, and some post-90s, the Tianya community is the "spiritual territory" of youth memories and the Internet PC era.
Back in the 90s, when China's Internet was just getting started, various Internet platforms began to emerge, and Tianya Community was one of them.
In March 1999, Tianya Virtual Community was born, only one month before the birth of Tianya Community was the QQ launched by Tencent, Tianya Community and QQ are products of the same era.
After the establishment of Tianya Virtual Community, it opened columns such as Stock Forum, Tianya Miscellaneous Talks, Computer Technology, Emotional World, Art and Literature Comic Pen (later renamed Wuwen Nongink), News Commentary, Sports Focus, Bookworm Tea House (later renamed Idle Book), Tourism and Leisure, Hainan Development, Tianya Mutual Aid and other columns.
Although the Chinese Internet was just popularized at that time, the Tianya community quickly attracted a large number of users after its establishment, users called themselves "Tianya people", users posted various posts on the Tianya community, interactive communication, free discussion of open topics, the influence is like today's Weibo and circle of friends.
"Top", "Step", "Flood", "Sofa" ... and other words have become the colloquial language of the Tianya community, and many words are still used today, and it is better to say the top: Awesome, my brother!
For example, in early 2006, Tianya Community launched a post called "Li Zhou Alphabet Diary", which described the mysterious death of a Beijing girl, Li Zhou, which had a great impact.
Tianya community has become an Internet force, in emergencies such as disasters and social events, Tianya community can quickly gather social forces, such as the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, Tianya community quickly organized a large number of materials and donation activities, providing assistance and support to the people in the disaster area.
Interestingly, in addition to gossip entertainment, the Tianya community has also become a gathering place for literati and high-end talents.
The editor of "Wulin Gaiden", X, the well-known editor of "Wulin Gaiden", was once a writer of Tianya, including online novels such as "Those Things in the Ming Dynasty" and now made into a classic online drama "Ghost Blowing Lantern" are all from the Tianya community.
To this day, people still give a high evaluation of the Tianya community: Tianya community is now a large collection of software such as Zhihu, Qianqi and WeChat, and is the "originator" of the early Chinese Internet.
At that time, when Ma Huateng was hesitant to sell QQ, the number of users in the Tianya community showed explosive growth.
After 6 years of development, Tianya Community quickly developed from a small forum to a large comprehensive community with a head Chinese BBS.
From its establishment in 1999 to 2005, Tianya registered users reached 6 million, active registered users reached 3.5 million, and the number of online users reached 80,000, and the Tianya community registered users exceeded 130 million at its peak.
In the 2004 "Top 100 BBS Communities in China" selection jointly initiated by World Manager Weekly and World IT Lab, Tianya Community ranked first overall.
In July 2005, IDG Capital, Qingke Venture Capital and Datang Development and Control conducted a round of financing for Tianya, with a financing scale of millions of dollars. Soon, Qingke Venture Capital, Legend Holdings, Google, and Legend Capital launched a series B financing of tens of millions of dollars, of which Google invested $1 million to subscribe for 6.67% of the shares of Tianya Holdings.
02 The Decline of the World
From its establishment in 1999 to 2010, it was a period of crazy growth and highlight for the Tianya community, but the progress of the technological era was rapid and ruthless.
After 2010, entering the era of mobile Internet, social media such as Weibo and WeChat have risen, and netizens, elite V, celebrities, public figures, etc. have begun to move to new platforms.
Gradually, the Tianya community was no longer a topic manufacturing center, and the Tianya community soon went downhill and continued to decline.
Later, the voice of the Tianya community became smaller and smaller, and more and more negative news was heard.
According to the Tianyan investigation, at present, there are 6 pieces of information on the enforceees in the main company of Tianya Community Management, and the cumulative execution target exceeds 146 million yuan. At the same time, the company and its founder, Xing Ming, have dozens of consumption restrictions. In addition, the company has also been involved in hundreds of cases, including disputes over reputation rights and infringement of the right to transmit information on the network of works.
The Tianya community has lost its luster, a large number of users have been lost, and there has long been no sense of existence. The Tianya community is inaccessible, and its withdrawal from the stage of Internet history has long been expected.
So, why did the Tianya community decline rapidly from its peak?
From the perspective of new products, the reason why the Tianya community will decline, in addition to the influence of the general environmental factors of the development of the Internet technology era, Tianya itself also has reasons.
In the era of mobile Internet, users have poured into new platforms such as Weibo, WeChat, and even blogs, and the number of users has decreased sharply, especially the loss of core user groups and old user groups, and it is impossible to attract new users, and the rapid loss of users directly impacts the Tianya community.
It is inevitable that Tianya community was one of the mainstream Chinese forums at that time, and a large number of netizens poured in during the peak period, with strange user types, and uneven user levels, which also "laid mines" for Tianya community.
In the early days, Tianya community was the "spiritual gathering place" of Internet people, and people read information, gossip, communicate and share with each other in the Tianya community, but later the Tianya community had more users and the content changed, and the later Tianya community became a platform for flooding, mutual intimidation and abuse, and became a "hodgepodge" website of various trolls, water stickers and advertising stickers.
Xinpin Liucaiguan remembers that when many companies were doing SEO and Internet business marketing, they posted in the Tianya community, which was full of a large number of advertising posts, and there were many low-quality and even vulgar posts in the Tianya community.
The decline in content quality has also made many old Tianya users sad to leave. According to public information, in 2013 and 2014, Tianya Community lost 31.6133 million yuan and 44.6582 million yuan respectively.
In addition to new social platforms such as Weibo and WeChat stealing users from the Tianya community, Baidu Tieba and Douban and forums in sub-sectors such as movie forums have attracted users in vertical fields.
Tianya Community is a magical website, which has a strong humanistic atmosphere since its birth, but from the perspective of business operation and business, profit can survive, and companies that do not make money are hooligans.
Xing Ming, the founder of Tianya Community, is a very emotional person, which makes Tianya Community have a strong founder color. Xing Ming once said that "Tianya feeling" is the company's core competitiveness.
Xing Ming made his first pot of gold by speculating in stocks, so unlike the first generation of many Internet companies that relied on venture capital or financing to burn money, Xing Ming has always believed that Tianya is not short of money.
It is a pity that Tianya Community missed the listing outlet, and later Xing Ming also refused Zhang Chaoyang's invitation to buy.
Interestingly, later the Tianya community still went to the capital market.
Tianya Community quietly listed on the New Third Board in April 2015, but in the hundreds of listing announcements at that time, Tianya Community was still dug up by the media, triggering the collective nostalgia of "Tianya people".
In the more than three years since its listing on the New Third Board, Tianya Community has only obtained 100 million yuan of financing through additional issuance, and due to qualification problems, Tianya Community has been suspended since the end of 2016, and the financing function has basically been lost.
In October 2015, Tianya Community issued an announcement that Xing Ming, chairman and general manager of Tianya Community, resigned as general manager. On April 16, 2019, Tianya Community was sadly delisted from the New Third Board.
At the beginning, Google invested 1 million US dollars to subscribe for 6.67% of the shares of Tianya Holdings, and also provided some technical and operational service support for the Tianya community.
Later, Google wanted to withdraw from the Chinese market, and in the second half of 2010, it stopped technical and operational support for Tianya Laiba and Tianya Know, which made Tianya not only have to buy back shares, but also lost the largest traffic entrance.
In addition, there are many problems in the internal management of Tianya community, Tianya community pays attention to feelings and human touch, employees will not be fired if they make big mistakes, project management is chaotic, no one makes decisions, no one takes responsibility or no one executes, the core management team lives in Hainan for a long time, and does not keep up with the wave of industry development.
Tianya has not established a good talent reserve mechanism, and every time it faces the attack of competitors, the first trick that Tianya community thinks of is to recruit people.
Tianya Community has spent a lot of money to recruit talents from Baidu, Google China, and IBM, but finally could not integrate, not only delayed the product, but also aggravated the financial situation of Tianya Community to continue to deteriorate.
Therefore, the reason why the Tianya community can develop is to occupy the first opportunity, the timing, the location, the people, and the decline of the Tianya community from the peak is because of external troubles and internal worries.
03 The BBS era is over
The closure of the Tianya community quickly became a hot search, once again triggering people's nostalgia for the past Chinese the era of BBS Internet forums.
Today, not only one Internet community in Tianya Community cannot be opened, but many well-known Internet communities have long been closed.
On April Fool's Day 2022, Renren announced the official closure of its website and APP.
2021 is a big year for the closure of traditional Internet communities, in 2021, Maopu, which was once as famous as the Tianya community, closed the posting function, and the military content community Iron Blood Community announced its permanent closure in December 2021. In September 2021, Xici Hutong closed the posting function, and in November 2022, the Xici Hutong changed owners and was only sold for 275,000 yuan and officially closed.
In previous years, the Chinese BBS Forum website was closed every year, in 2015, Phoenix Forum and Daqi.com announced the closure, in 2016, NetEase Forum announced its closure, and in 2017, Sohu Community and Global Forum announced its closure.
According to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the decline of the forum began in 2009, when the use of such services declined for the first time.
Nowadays, the Tianya community website and APP can no longer be opened, which once again inspires many netizens to be nostalgic.
As of press time, Tianya Community Company has not officially responded to the fact that it cannot open the official website and APP, but the era of traditional BBS forums has ended.
The Internet era and the mobile Internet era will accelerate progress in the future, and technology will be rapidly updated and iterated, and no Internet company can stop the tide of the times.
Ma Huateng once said frankly in an interview with the media at the end of 2018 that WeChat got the mobile Internet station ticket through the month of life and death, and today it is still worried about being subverted, and no temporarily leading company in this industry can "sit back and relax".
In the era of Ukka, whether it is an enterprise or an individual, it is just a grain of sand, but it can only rush forward, there is no choice!