It is worth buying technology to update the development strategy: use AI to comprehensively reconstruct product logic

Reporter Li Jing reports from Beijing

"In my opinion, if a company can't consistently do the right thing for a long time, if it's trying to find a new outlet and talk about a new topic every year, I don't think it's the right strategy." On May 10, Sui Guodong, founder and chairman of Worthbuy Technology, said at the 2024 strategy conference, "Worthbuy Technology does not often hold strategic conferences, but it doesn't mean that we don't think. ”

Born in the late PC Internet era (2010), Worthbuy Technology has achieved rapid development by actively embracing the mobile Internet since 2012, and has grown into an A-share listed company in the consumer content track in 2019. In 2021, in the face of great changes in the ecology of the content industry, Worthbuy Technology began to implement a diversification strategy.

Looking back on the last strategy conference, Sui Guodong said that through the diversification strategy, Worthbuy Technology has achieved coverage of more diverse content forms and broader traffic fields in three years, serving more consumers across the network.

In 2023, in the face of the surging wave of AIGC new technologies, Worthbuy Technology has carried out rapid and effective exploration of AI R&D and application, and finally evolved into a comprehensive innovation of the underlying capabilities of the entire business system.

"AI is the gift of our time." Sui Guodong said that under the framework of the AI strategy, the core product What's Worth Buying APP will be transformed and upgraded to "AI-native What's Worth Buying GEN2", and at the same time actively promote the overseas plan.

The diversification strategy has yielded remarkable results

In March 2021, in the context of "diversification of content platforms" and "diversification of customer marketing needs", Worthbuy Technology carried out a comprehensive strategic upgrade for the "second decade": on the basis of insisting on consumer content as the core, it faced the whole network and the whole domain, and in-depth layout of the three core sectors of consumer content, marketing services and consumer data. In that strategic upgrade, "endlessly improving the connection efficiency between the B-end and the C-side" was clearly defined as the company's long-term pursuit.

Since 2021, Worthbuy Technology has begun to deeply deploy the three core sectors of consumer content, marketing services and consumer data, and has continuously incubated a variety of innovative businesses such as "full-link services for matching goods and media, agency operation services, consumer MCN, and brand marketing" by "applying the content capabilities and experience of what is worth buying APP to other fields and improving the efficiency of consumers across the network to obtain high-quality information". In 2023, the two innovative businesses of "full-link service for matching commodities and media" and "agency operation service" have grown into profit growth points that have begun to take shape.

According to the 2023 financial report released not long ago, during the reporting period, Worthbuy Technology achieved an operating income of 1.452 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 18.17%, a net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies of 74.7753 million yuan, and a confirmed GMV of more than 28 billion yuan for e-commerce platforms and brand owners throughout the year. Among them, the innovative business is already the second largest revenue segment worth buying technology. In 2023, the innovative business of Worthbuy Technology will contribute 497 million yuan in revenue, a year-on-year increase of 45.79%, and its proportion in operating income will further increase to 34.26%. In the previous 2022, 2021 and 2020, the proportion of innovative business to total revenue was 27.77%, 25.52% and 8.61%, respectively.

With the expansion of the connection field, it is worth buying technology to find that the massive content from the whole network seems to give consumers more choices, but in fact, it cannot directly improve efficiency, and content screening has become extremely important. "All problems are ultimately a matter of efficiency." Sui Guodong concluded.

He judged that AI is the key to solving the problem of efficiency, not only at the technical level and the insight of global trends, but also based on the active exploration and extensive practice of Worthbuy Technology in the field of AIGC research and development and application in the past.

At the beginning of 2023, Worthbuy Technology identified AIGC as a key strategic project of the company, established an independent AI business division, independently developed the "Worthbuy Consumption Model", and from 2023, it has successively launched a variety of applications in business scenarios to realize the implementation of AIGC scenarios.

Wang Yunfeng, CTO of Worthbuy Technology, once said in an interview with reporters from China Business News and other media: "AI has brought a new technical logic and intelligence supply, and we have already had some layout in the business field and some transformations for the business flow. However, from the perspective of the development of AI, we believe that it is still in the early stage, which means that AIGC has its capability boundary, and when building products, it needs to play its strengths according to its actual capabilities and avoid shortcomings. ”

In the second half of 2023, based on the self-developed "Worth Buying Consumption Model", Worth Buy Technology launched a series of applications such as "AI Comment Robot", "AI Purchase Suggestions" and "ZDM-copilot Creator Tool" on the "What is Worth Buying" APP. In 2023, the AIGC output content of the "What's Worth Buying" platform will increase by 150.58% year-on-year, accounting for 36.66% of the overall content release.

The business is fully AI-based

Facing the future, Sui Guodong said at the strategic conference that Worthbuy Technology will continue to use AI to transform products and services, and pursue higher-quality development and longer-term success in the future through the comprehensive AI of the company's business. At the press conference, the AI product matrix of Worthbuy Technology, which is composed of "1 large model, 2 databases, 3 engines, and 4 types of applications", made its overall appearance for the first time.

Among them, in terms of the basic model, Worth Buy Technology chose the self-developed "Worth Buying Consumption Model". Wang Yunfeng once explained to reporters: "Because the general model is difficult to apply to the consumer industry, and at the same time, there are particularities in the consumer industry in various vertical models. However, the reporter noticed that Worth Buy Technology is actually cooperating with general large model partners such as Baichuan Intelligence, Baidu, Face Wall Intelligence, Dark Side of the Moon, and Zhipu Huazhang, and said that it will cooperate with more partners in the future to promote the further improvement of the industry ecology.

It is understood that at present, it is worth buying technology has become the first batch of partners on the dark side of the moon, "Kimi + what is worth buying" has been launched recently, and AI shopping experts will be launched in the Baichuan intelligent twins platform in May. "Including cooperation with domestic large-scale model manufacturers, as well as joint research projects on AI with academia, we hope to work with the industry to do more infrastructure construction." Wang Yunfeng explained.

According to the strategic plan, based on the capabilities and tools provided by the AI product matrix, the business of Worthbuy Technology will be fully AI-based to greatly improve business efficiency and quality. At the same time, the company will continue to build an AI-based organization by creating an AI culture, cultivating and introducing talents, and AI-driven process reengineering.

AI's significant transformation of the business will be reflected in the core products of the technology. Among them, Worthbuy Technology officially disclosed the positioning of "what is worth buying GEN2": a consumer content platform that applies AI technology to collect, analyze, refine, and recommend consumer content on the whole network based on the user's personalized interests. As the second-generation product of what is worth buying APP, the product form and underlying logic of GEN2 will undergo subversive changes.

Sui Guodong pointed out that when Worth Buy Technology was founded, Chinese consumers were faced with "inefficient access to high-quality consumer content" caused by "insufficient consumption content", and at present, consumers' dilemma is "inefficient access to high-quality consumer content" caused by "excessive consumption content". In the face of a large number of consumer content, "screening has become extremely important". The most efficient "screening" is to help users find what they really like in their hearts and find content that they really approve of in their hearts.

In GEN2's content ecosystem with "interest" as the core, AI will provide underlying capability support for almost all links such as content production, content collection, content understanding, content generation, and content distribution. Among them, AI-assisted creation tools can effectively help users lower the threshold for creation and improve the quality of creation, and the AIUC engine can screen out really good content through the evaluation of multiple dimensions such as information density, creative intention, emotional emotion, trend scenarios, and price factors. Based on these good contents, the AIGC engine will further improve the quality of information by summarizing, refining, and sorting.

Previously, Worth Buy Technology has announced that it will promote the "Worth Buying" model to go overseas through self-operation and cooperation in 2024. Sui Guodong further introduced the specific details of the overseas plan at the strategic press conference. At present, Thailand has been selected by Worthbuy Technology as the first stop to go overseas, and the operation model is "self-operated". The Thai version of "What's Worth Buying" is named "ZestBuy", and the app is being launched on major app markets one after another. In addition to the self-operated model, there are also global partner programs, joint ventures and other modes of specific operation models, and Worthbuy Technology will provide partners with full technology empowerment and talent training empowerment to jointly expand overseas markets.

(Editor: Zhang Jingchao Proofreader: Yan Jingning)