When there is poverty in the corner of the "end of the world", there is only the endless place of acacia!
Talking about the word "Tianya" has evoked the initial memories of many post-80s people for the Internet. As an indelible name in the development of the Internet, "Tianya" once represented an era!
The influence of the "Tianya" of the past and present on the Internet is no less than that of Today's WeChat. Not only did it become popular with the earliest batch of Internet celebrities such as "Sister Furong", but also won the popularity of many super IPs such as "Ghost Blowing Lights", "Get Out of the Egg Tumor Jun", "Those Things of the Ming Dynasty" and so on.
However, with the passage of time, with the exclamation of "the end of the world is still here, the vicissitudes of the world are reincarnated", today's "Tianya" is finally forgotten in the dust of history.
A few days ago, "Tianya Community" issued an announcement that the company's shares terminated listing on the New Third Board.
But even so, the news is known to very few people, or even no one pays attention to it, which makes people even more sad!
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The same is the end of the world fellen people, why should they have met?
The story of "Tianya" also begins with its founder Xing Ming.
Xing Ming was born in 1967 to a poor rural family in Cangzhou, Hebei Province. Coupled with being born in that special era, Xing Ming had not eaten a full meal since birth.
When he was 2 years old, because there were no grain left in the family, seeing that the family was about to be starved to death, Xing Ming's father wiped his face and took the family to Wenchang, Hainan Province, to join a distant relative.
In 1974, Xing Ming's father took Xing Ming to visit Song Qingling's former residence. There, his father said in a loud voice with Xing Ming: "The biggest loss I suffered in my life is illiteracy, you must study well and go to college in the future." ”
For Xing Ming at that time, although he was only 7 years old, he deeply felt the deep meaning behind his father's words, and it was therefore that Xing Ming worked harder than his peers in reading.
It is also for this reason that in 1987, Xing Ming was admitted to the Chinese Department of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou with the first place in the whole school.
During his time in school, Xing Ming, who loved philosophy when he was not in class, always stayed in the dormitory to read a book called "Criticism of Critical Philosophy", and talked about guitar when he was tired.
It is said that Xing Ming's university life is very exciting, coupled with his unique literary and artistic temperament, Xing Ming has also been pursued by many female students.
After graduating from university in 1991, Xing Ming found a job as a civil servant and entered the Hainan Provincial Government Information Center. It was also the reason for this job that allowed Ming Ming to be exposed to the "Internet" for the first time.
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In the five years of working in the Hainan Provincial Government Information Center, Xing Ming has been responsible for the information content, and with the efforts of the team, they have built the public information network in Hainan Province.
Through the content construction of the website, Xing Ming found that the Internet information is not only richer than the traditional publication content, but also can be updated at any time, with a strong timeliness, which makes him have a little more expectations for the future of the Internet.
In 1996, China's stock market began to rise sharply, coinciding with the bull market, almost entering the era of national stock speculation. Xing Ming, who conforms to the trend, has also joined the ranks of the stock speculation army.
Because of his work, Xing Ming can always receive the latest news news, so Xing Ming has made a lot of money by speculating in stocks.
It is said that Xing Ming's income in the stock market that year exceeded 20 million!
1998 coincided with the reform and opening up, and a wave of entrepreneurship was also set off in China, and enterprises such as Sina and Sohu were born in the Internet industry. At this time, Xing Ming finally couldn't sit still and chose to resign and "go to the sea" to start a business.
Therefore, with so many years of contact with Internet information technology, Xing Ming took the 20 million earned from the stock market to create the "Tianya Community".
Coincidentally, when the "Tianya Community" was launched, it was exactly when the "Four Links Lifang" was renamed "Sina Network". Because of the name change and positioning change, Sina at that time also lost a part of the population, and at this time, the "Tianya Community" just came into being and received this part of the "Sina" loss of users. And this part of the user also laid the groundwork for the rise of "Tianya" later.
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When xing ming did not look for the operation team when he first started to do the "Tianya Forum", he left everything to the user to decide and let it grow barbarically. According to Xing Ming, every column of "Tianya" is required by users themselves.
With the development of the "Tianya Forum", the columns of the forum have also begun to be subdivided, with stock forums and literary novels, forming a small world unique to netizens in each field.
In this "original" management mode, there are more and more users of "Tianya". What is even more unexpected is that there are only two programmers, no promotion, and no financing" of "Tianya" finally successfully survived the 2000 Internet bubble!
As the saying goes, "If it is difficult not to die, there will be a blessing in disguise." And "Tianya", who survived the cold winter of the Internet in 2000, interpreted the meaning of this passage by example!
Since 2002, Murong Xuecun began to serialize the novel "Chengdu, Please Forget Me Tonight" in the "Tianya Forum", and in just a few days, the number of readers of the novel exceeded 200,000! In an era when the Internet was not yet widespread, this number was extremely large.
It was also for this reason that not only Murong Xue Village was on fire! "Tianya" is also on fire!
However, this is only the "foreplay" of "Tianya" becoming popular throughout the Internet. What really made "Tianya" known to everyone was a 2004 post titled "Two Rural Primary Schools and a Volunteer Teacher.".
As soon as the post was released, it quickly attracted the attention of public opinion, and in only 3 days, the number of posts exceeded 3 million.
Because the influence of the post is huge, in the end, it even alarmed the CCTV reporter to interview Xu Benyu, who gave up graduate school in the post and chose to go to the mountainous areas of Guizhou to support teaching.
It is also for this reason that Xu Benyu won the 2004 "Moving China" figure. Since then, the "Tianya" with the endorsement of CCTV has begun to catch fire!
The subsequent super IPs such as "Ghost Blowing Lights", "Those Things of the Ming Dynasty", and "Underworld 20" are the icing on the cake, pushing "Tianya" to the first forum of the Chinese Internet.
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With the popularity of "Tianya", Sohu and Sina have successively thrown olive branches to it, hoping to take "Tianya" under their command.
For Xing Ming, ending the acquisition of the portal was definitely the best at that time, after all, although "Tianya" was hot, it still had no ability to monetize.
But at this time, Xing Ming chose to refuse, for Xing Ming "Tianya" is a feeling, he does not want "Tianya" to be acquired, but does not oppose investors to enter the shares.
It is also for this reason that "Tianya" and Sohu and Sina pass by!
Since then, the development of "Tianya" has been relatively smooth, and it has successively received investment from IDG, Zero2IPO, Lenovo, Google, Jiangnanchun and other institutions and individuals, opening up the road of rapid development.
Taking the investor's money, Xing Ming's "Tianya" is no longer the forum that allows it to grow barbarically, after all, it is necessary to make money to return investors, so "Tianya" has also begun its own commercialization route.
However, how to ensure the premise of commercialization, do not bring too much trouble to users, and Xing Ming has competed for this life.
After browsing all the websites, Xing Ming found that "Tianya" is a website with classified columns, and it can engage in an advertising column, which can greatly reduce the impact of advertising on netizens.
Therefore, later ,Tianya" launched an advertising column of "recommended topics" to ensure that the premise of commercial talk is not too much to disturb netizens.
Therefore, "Tianya" has taken the commercial route, and the increase in fans has not been affected in the slightest.
By 2007, "Tianya's users had exceeded 20 million, and its employees had exceeded 300!"
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2008 became a year of rapid expansion of "Tianya", this year Xing Ming recruited a lot of talents from Baidu, Google, IBM and other large enterprises, formed a strong R & D team and developed the ADTOP advertising system.
This system has also brought dozens of large customers such as "Seven Days Hotel Chain", "Pepsi Cola", "Hainan Airlines" and "Jingdong" to "Tianya", bringing no small benefits to "Tianya".
In addition to the advertising business, Xing Ming also set his sights on the online game industry at that time. At that time, China's online games were erupting, and a large number of online games such as "Dream Journey to the West" and "Xue Xian" were indispensable, and Xing Ming also saw the opportunity.
In 2009, Xing Ming also began to develop online games with his own team. As he thought, it didn't take long for him to earn 300,000, so he decided to go on a rampage.
Soon Xing Ming found a research and development team of 60 people and began to officially enter the online game industry.
But what Xing Ming did not expect was that the game he developed did not capture the preferences of "Tianya" users, so the conversion rate was very low, no one played at all, so Xing Ming lost millions in the online game industry.
As the saying goes, "misfortune is not alone", and it was also at this time that another accident quietly arrived.
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In 2010, Google announced the launch of the Chinese market, and at this time, the rise of the domestic ChiNext board, "Tianya" is also expected to become the first batch of Gem companies.
So Xing Ming proposed to Google the idea of buying back shares, but no one could imagine that Google was not willing to quit. As a result, the negotiations between the two sides also reached an impasse.
Fortunately, in the end, Google relaxed and decided to exit "Tianya" at a price of more than 3 times the premium of $1.9 million.
However, after "Tianya" completed the stock reform, it was already 2011, when the ChiNext board promulgated a new standard, and the profitability of "Tianya" at that time could not touch the ChiNext board, missing the best listing window.
What's worse is that the rise of blogs and microblogs in the following years sucked away a lot of big Vs in "Tianya". At this time, Xing Ming did not lead the company's transformation, but still deepened in the field of forums, and his performance was not as good as a year.
Since 2013, "Tianya" has also opened a loss model for consecutive years, and a generation of "public opinion empires" have also gone to loneliness.
Although "Tianya" successfully listed on the New Third Board in 2015 and made many financings, from the results, it did not help.
In 2017, "Tianya" once again obtained a non-public subscription of 1 million shares of Huaxia Happiness with a valuation of 2.2 billion, but the valuation of WeChat at that time exceeded 800 billion.
In other words, the valuation of "Tianya", which has been walking for 17 years, is less than 1% of WeChat! People can't help but sigh "the sun is setting, and the intestines are broken at the end of the world."
It is said that "Tianya" will officially launch its IPO plan after the delisting of the New Third Board, or prepare for the science and technology innovation board. But today, when the competition in Internet social media is becoming increasingly fierce, "Tianya" wants to return to the Internet outlet again, and we can only wait and see the end.