Gu Yongqiang: In the next ten years, distribution and content will be subverted, and the future will enter the "screenless era"

Gu Yongqiang believes that in the next ten years, in the first two years, O2O will be launched, the so-called online to offline. If there were a lot of online production businesses five or six years ago, we predict that the future will not be divided into so-called online and offline. We will see the era of integration, and from the perspective of content production, in the future, so-called big online movies will be opened up, online dramas and TV dramas will also be opened up, and online comprehensive and variety shows will also be opened up. All these contents will be integrated in the next two to three years.

Alibaba's entertainment section has undergone a series of personnel changes. Gu Yongqiang, born in the 1960s, retired behind the scenes, and Yu Yongfu, born in the 1970s, took full charge of Ali Entertainment before taking the stage.

December 8 is a special day for Gu Yongqiang. On November 8, 2010, Youku was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. This year marks the sixth anniversary of Youku's listing. In April 2016, Youku delisted and returned to China. On December 8,"veteran" Gu Yongqiang shared his ten years of experience in the entertainment industry at the 4th Internet Audiovisual Conference.

It has been ten years since the Internet and culture and entertainment. If the first year of video was 2006, then 2015 would be exactly ten years, so online audio-visual was also ten years. When Youku Tudou was founded in 2005, it has continued to evolve with the development of the industry and is now 11 years old.

When summarizing the past ten years, Gu Yongqiang believes that "the industry is constantly upgrading at all levels, whether from distribution, production, or monetization. From single screen to multiple screens, content distribution has been completely subverted, and now is the era of multiple screens."

But he believes that content monetization is still on the way. From a production perspective, it may have been five years since 2009 and 10 since the earliest micro-movies, online dramas, and online comprehensive productions to the later era of large-scale production. If the angle of monetization may be shorter, it may take two to three years. So all industry changes are on the way. The first decade has indeed seen changes in the industry's behavior across China and the world, and users 'habits and methods of viewing content are changing.

"In the next decade, what will we see in new audio-visual? What can we play with our abilities?" Gu Yongqiang reflected,"Distribution, content, and monetization will all be subverted. If distribution was subverted in the first ten years, but content and monetization are still on the road, in fact, what we foresee is that in the next ten years, new online audio-visual conferences will be more exciting, changes will be greater, and subversion will be more complete. There are many opportunities, many challenges, and many responsibilities here."

From the perspective of Heyi Group's distribution, there has been an era from a single screen and multiple screens at the beginning to "no screen" now.

"In the past two years, we all think that virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality will be demonstrated one by one in the next ten years. This world combines some core technologies such as artificial intelligence and cloud computing, so a new entertainment user experience has been created. Maybe it's really unexpected now that you can create the 360-degree low viewing angle, 3D, and all kinds of things that you can experience and experience on the road, in the office, at home, in any scene."

"In the past two years, the development of the content industry and the literature and art industry has actually been subtle and quietly changing, but I think the explosion point is still behind. Twenty years ago, when I was making books and periodicals, I was selling a publication with a circulation of 50,000 people. In fact, advertising was the only source of income. Whether it is between users and content, between experiences, between products, and from finance, we see that development in the next decade will have very big questions in terms of monetization, and the systematization of advertising will change the entire advertising industry."

Gu Yongqiang also has a new identity, which is the chairman of Alibaba Entertainment Strategic Investment. He said that he spent a long time thinking about the direction of Ali Entertainment, which is dual engines, one is platform and industry; the other is ecology and investment.

There are big Youku and big UC platforms in the platform industry. In the Internet industry and entertainment, it is not just audio-visual. It should be a completely integrated one. Youku serves as an audio-visual platform and UC serves as a graphic and text information streaming platform. Such integration is development trend.

In terms of ecology and investment, Alibaba has established a 10 billion eco-fund focusing on China's culture and entertainment. When Gu Yongqiang returned from Silicon Valley in 1994, he also worked as the first-generation venture capital fund.

"Now the third generation of venture capital companies will emerge, and most venture capital companies will focus on technology, while we will focus on entertainment. Regarding cultural and creative opportunities in culture and entertainment, I think in the next ten years, there will be many great young entrepreneurs based on the three subversion mentioned earlier." Gu Yongqiang is full of affirmation for the future.

Many people in ecological investment are asking, which three directions will the entertainment investment of big entertainment companies focus on? Gu Yongqiang summed up the "three I's": IP, International, and Innovation. Content intellectual property, not all content is intellectual property. Innovation, innovation in entertainment revolves around watching, finding, playing, and filming. We have seen many changes in education, many big data, and education, and there are many possibilities for literary and artistic innovation. Gu believes that there will be many opportunities for international linkage in the entertainment industry in the next ten years.

Editor: yvette