Text | Leap Ran
Edit | Jiang Jiang
Tianya still can't log in normally.
Because IDC owes fees and servers are stopped, Tianya Community, which was once popular and known as "China's first Internet community", now has to go into the live broadcast room to sell goods in order to raise 3 million yuan in restart funds.
Restart Tianya Douyin live broadcast room/Source: Restart Tianya Douyin live broadcast screenshot
But it is precisely because of this sale that more people have a deeper understanding of the "end of an era", and some netizens sighed, "It seems to be sent to the ICU, live broadcast crowdfunding rescue".
Everyone is nostalgic for Tianya, but no one can save Tianya yet.
Live broadcast, seven days and seven nights
On May 28, 2023, a live broadcast called "Restart Tianya" was launched. At eight o'clock in the evening, Song Zheng appeared in the Douyin live broadcast room on time, expounding the original intention of the "restart the world" activity of live broadcasting for seven days and seven nights and raising 3 million yuan.
Restart Tianya Douyin account/Source: Restart Tianya Douyin screenshot
Song Zheng, former executive editor of Tianya Community, the first employee of Tianya and the organizer of the event.
In the case of Tianya being suspended, he was authorized by Xing Ming, CEO of Tianya, to raise 3 million yuan in a special way such as live streaming to save Tianya's life and restore Tianya's normal visit.
Live streaming has now become a "lifesaver" for many people.
Luo Yonghao can be regarded as relying on live streaming e-commerce to decently complete the "true return transmission"; Yu Minhong also preferred live streaming after the drastic changes in the education industry, turning over against the wind; Even Li Yapeng, who "lost one line and one line of losses" after leaving the entertainment industry, also wanted to make money by live broadcasting to pay off debts after owing huge debts.
In this way, live streaming is the most direct and easiest industry to create wealth, but from the perspective of Tianya's self-help, it is not so easy.
It was a volunteer event organized by former employees and regular users, and it was said that there was only 18 days from the time of making up the decision to the start of the live broadcast.
Therefore, the entire live broadcast on the evening of May 28 can be described as both hasty and chaotic. In the first 6 minutes, Song Zheng's voice could not be heard by netizens, and all the noise received in the microphone was the noise of other staff.
Because they are all newbies, they can only write to communicate / Source: Weibo @Chao News
Before this, these people had almost no contact with live streaming and were all "amateur players".
Even Tianya former fans, many of whom have just downloaded Douyin, don't even know how to order something in the live broadcast room - there is a deep sense of tragedy and powerlessness.
Song Zheng originally wanted to invite some well-known celebrities to the live broadcast room, but he said that it was difficult to find and the progress was slow.
Song Zheng reflected: "Tianya itself is a platform created by countless grassroots participants, why can't we just tell grassroots stories?" It's not just celebrities who deserve attention. ”
So he decided to invite some "old Tianya" to listen to their stories in Tianya - seven days and seven nights to gather an oral history of Tianya.
Among them, Song Zheng also connected to Xing Ming on the spot, but Xing Ming did not show his face during the whole process, and the camera only showed the background picture of "Tianya Community". The comment area also began to stir up, thinking that the boss did not pay attention to it, and the restart was insincere.
Not only is the format of the live chat not ready, but the anchors are also very unfamiliar with bringing goods, and the product links have not been put on the shelves for a long time.
Within 3 hours, the highest audience in the "Restart Tianya" live broadcast room was only 1,000 people, and the number one restart Tianya commemorative T-shirt was scheduled to sell less than 200 pieces.
Restart the commemorative T-shirt in the Tianya Douyin window/Source: Screenshot of the live broadcast of Restart Tianya
Through two days of live broadcast, Song Zheng gradually figured out some gameplay in the live broadcast room, and took the initiative to turn off his beauty. On May 30, the "Restart the World" live broadcast room has been linked to nearly 100 products, and the live broadcast screen is also full of various products.
In the selection of products, it can be said that everything is sold, including Tianya peripherals, signed books, mineral water, tea, wangwang senbei, as well as data cables, garbage bags, and golden-voiced throat treasures. Song Zheng said, "I don't know much about goods, I don't know about these products, I eat and drink and wear everything, so let's see what you need." ”
There are constantly fans in the live broadcast room asking how much is still close to 3 million. Song Zheng also answered frankly, completed a profit of more than 100,000 in the past two days, and lamented that he set the target too high, and it was still far from 3 million.
Restart Tianya sales/Source: Restart Tianya Douyin screenshot
As we can see, this live broadcast room did not attract much attention on the Internet. As of 10 p.m. on May 30, the number of followers of the Douyin account of "Restart Tianya" was only 24,000, and the vast majority of videos had only a few dozen likes.
Song Zheng is very eager for controversy and is also very much looking forward to being seen in the live broadcast room. He even imitated the ice bucket challenge to set up a relay race in the live broadcast room, asking fans to make videos and share vows to restart the world, and nominating three friends to participate.
In this era where careful polishing is not necessarily a hit, can such a traditional marketing campaign be remembered immediately?
Today, Tianya's sense of existence is too weak.
From prosperity to extinction of the "hometown"
Tianya has been established for 24 years and is the "spiritual hometown" of many people.
Netizens said that they had not visited Tianya for a long time, and Song Zheng said that he was too, "You have been away from this hometown for a long time, and you will not go back, but you hope it has always been there." Otherwise you'll be very bad."
In 1999, Xing Ming was in a good mood and founded Tianya Community in Hainan with "20 million yuan of income earned from stock speculation". At that time, it was also the time when Chinese Internet giants such as Tencent and Alibaba appeared one after another.
Xing Ming/Source: Foresight Network
Once Tianya, known as "the world's largest Chinese Internet community", most of the early users came from universities, media and research institutions. The community has a strong knowledge atmosphere, many views are unfamiliar and fresh, users talk about building high-rise buildings, and they can rebel against moderators if they are not satisfied.
In this process, Tianya has become popular with countless people, and phenomenal online literary works such as "Those Things in the Ming Dynasty", "Ghost Blowing Lights" and "Get Out" were also born here.
At its peak, the Tianya community had more than 130 million registered users, forming a unique network culture with Tianya characteristics.
Because of its strong users and high-quality content, Tianya was once a sweet potato in the eyes of capital.
In 2004, Sina and Sohu had hoped to buy Tianya Community, but Xing Ming refused. From 2005 to 2006, Tianya successively obtained investment from IDG, Qingke, Lenovo, Google, Jiang Nanchun and planned overseas listing.
As for the issue of commercialization, it was not until 2006, when the financing was launched, that Tianya began to think about it.
Before 2011, Tianya was not only very popular, but also had a lot of advertising revenue. However, in 2012, Tianya turned from prosperity to decline, and in 2006 and 2011, Tianya failed to list from overseas markets to ChiNext.
In 2014 and 2013, the net cash flow generated by Tianya Community operating activities was -25.7153 million yuan and -18.8064 million yuan respectively. Xing Ming responded at the time that Tianya's losses were caused by a large amount of R&D expenses invested in the transformation of the company in the early stage, as well as the impact from new social platforms such as Weibo and WeChat. At that time, Tianya launched membership-based advertising, precision advertising, etc., but none of them produced a breakthrough.
In 2014 and 2013, the net cash flow generated by the operation activities of Tianya Community was -25.7153 million yuan and -18.8064 million yuan respectively
There is no way, Tianya can only rely on the New Third Board for financing.
In August 2015, Tianya was listed on the New Third Board with an issue price of 13.33 yuan per share, and then carried out a second additional offering, with the highest valuation in the market exceeding 2 billion yuan. Because the 2015 annual report was not disclosed in time, the transfer was suspended only 6 days after Tianya landed on the New Third Board.
During the listing period of the New Third Board, the situation in Tianya did not improve. In 2016, Tianya Community implemented an additional issuance, intending to raise 54 million yuan to 210 million yuan. However, without performing the filing procedures, Tianya Community used part of the subscription funds of the subscription targets in advance to pay employee salaries, telecom hosting fees, optical fiber fees, etc.
Tianya raised funds/Source: New Third Board News
Finally, in April 2019, Tianya was officially delisted on the New Third Board.
At that time, Tianya publicly stated that the delisting was applied for by the company, and after the delisting, the company would seize the opportunity of China's capital market under the trend of registration system, officially launch the IPO plan, and actively prepare for the science and technology innovation board after the layout of social platform technological innovation and business model upgrade, and seek better development.
The products of the Internet age are both powerful and extremely fragile. The network environment has changed drastically, community content cannot be undertaken, competitors rise, and the world that loses users also loses high-quality content.
At the same time, a large number of literary works and writers have been poached by other websites, and paid reading and publishing have nothing to do with Tianya.
The decline of Tianya is inevitable, the business situation is naturally deteriorating, most of the income of Tianya community comes from advertising, but advertising revenue has also been declining. At this time, talking about actively preparing for the science and technology innovation board is tantamount to dreaming.
"Vegetative people" wait for rescue
Without money, everything turned out to be bad.
In early April 2023, Tianya became a "vegetative person" because it owed telecom more than 10 million server fees for several years.
In this regard, Song Zheng once revealed on Weibo: "Tianya is not dead, but his whole body is paralyzed. IDC owes money and the server is stopped. Because of the lawsuit, the domain name was also frozen by the court. ”
Song Zheng Weibo/Source: Weibo screenshot
Tianya Community issued an article saying that this serious liquidity crisis was caused by the failure of investment in the construction of the mobile Internet headquarters base in Chengdu, which led to a serious setback in the transformation of the mobile Internet, further triggered a chain reaction such as bank loan cuts, high compensation for employee resignation, etc., resulting in the overall liquidity crisis of Tianya Company.
Recently, Tianya Community Network Technology Co., Ltd. was listed in the list of abnormal operations by the Haikou Market Supervision Administration because it could not be contacted through the registered residence or business premises.
Tianya was listed in the list of abnormal operations by the Haikou Market Supervision Administration/Source: Screenshot of the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System
Tianyan check information, the company entity of Tianya Community currently has 6 pieces of information on the enforcee, and the cumulative execution target exceeds 146 million yuan.
At the same time, the company and Xing Ming also have dozens of consumption restriction orders. 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.
In the live broadcast room, Song Zheng repeatedly emphasized that the funds raised of 3 million yuan were used to restore the permissions of the Tianya server, so that users could restore access and save the memories they wanted.
It may not be too difficult to restore access, but it is not easy to keep Tianya alive.
In a public response on May 27, Tianya Community also made plans for its route after "rebirth": while carrying the "global Chinese online home", it focused on the mobile terminal; Based on the accumulation of big data of Tianya users, launch digital human assistant or digital twin services; As well as providing membership-based social e-commerce services, and combining the opportunities of Hainan Free Trade Port, Tianya users carefully select global consumer products and provide membership-based social e-commerce services.
Doing AI and e-commerce, it can be seen that Tianya also wants to actively follow the times.
In July last year, Tianya also launched the "Tianya Yuan Diamond Project", each diamond has a unique identity number, can be collected as a digital collection, and can be circulated through laws and regulations.
Tianya Yuan Diamond Project/Source: Sohu @ Tianya Community
But none of these businesses made a splash.
Tianya, which has raised funds from many sources, is still waiting for rescue.
In the live broadcast room, Song Zheng and "Lao Tianya" were shouting: "Zhang Yiming, it's better for you to take Tianya." ”
If they can't save 3 million in seven days and nights to complete the restart goal, Song Zheng said they will continue to do it.