Douban confirms that it will be listed overseas. Internal letter exposes changes in users and revenue on Social networks

Douban CEO Yang Bo (Abei) announced in an internal letter the current adjustments to its management and business lines, and proposed that Douban has entered a "pragmatic stage". The specific adjustments are divided into three parts according to Abei's ideas:

In the Internet age, all exports of traffic value are commercial realization. Even Douban, which is known as the most worthless for users in the entire Internet community, is no exception.

According to Douban's internal letter released in mid-year, Douban CEO Yang Bo (Abei) announced in the letter the current adjustments to its management and business lines, and proposed that Douban has entered a "pragmatic stage". The specific adjustments are divided into three parts according to Abei's ideas:

First, the product work related to Douban App and the main station has entered the stage of project organization, with the goal of accelerating the growth of App users; Establish a brand channel team to be responsible for broadening user channels on external content platforms such as WeChat Weibo;

Second, with "Douban Time" as the core brand and team, establish a content business department with revenue as the target, including the current" time" and" video"; with the goal of revenue from self-operated products, establish market-related business departments; Brand advertising," paper book" and" North" are managed under an independent budget system, and together with effects advertising, movie advertising, and commercial technology form a large commercial team. Ah Bei called it a "revenue line" in his internal letter;

third, Douban will also gradually close some products and businesses that have not improved for a long time or have lost money on a small revenue scale. A Bei specifically pointed out in his internal letter that this marks that Douban has entered a pragmatic stage, and the value, concept and brand of Douban should be integrated into daily work around the basics to support the continued rise of the Douban brand.

It is worth noting that Ah Bei also disclosed some specific ideas for Douban's listing in this internal letter: the expected channel for Douban's listing will be returned overseas again, and cash flow will be the main management method for independent budgets.

Based on this goal, Douban's future lines will begin to launch independent budgets to manage their respective outputs and costs, and gradually replace the previous Head Count management. The traffic and resources generated by the user line are used by the revenue line through internal accounting and are all included in the accounting cost of each revenue line.

Douban has been growing for 12 years since its establishment was announced in 2005. This Internet community with over 100 million users is the only remaining virgin land in the Internet era. It has not been effectively explored for 12 years. Founder A Bei has been repeatedly criticized for lack of business foresight. Because of the label attributes of Douban platform and users, Douban's many commercialization attempts have been to "get up early and catch a late episode."

With the arrival of the new Internet wave, Douban seems to have also embarked on the commercial express train with products such as Douban Time. But 12 years later, what is Douban's odds of winning?

The

most controversial and valuable part of Douban's "Most Valuable Users" is always the group of loyal users it gathers.

From its establishment in 2005 to today, Douban's user portraits have remained generally the same: because their interests are distributed in various beehive units, they are relatively young, they are brave in trying and have high quality requirements for cultural products. This clear user attribute comes from Douban's initial platform settings. According to Ah Bei's recollections, the original intention of establishing Douban at that time was to have an interest community."Searching requires typing keywords, but if a good thing is new, how can users who have never heard of the product discover it? This requires establishing a connection between people and things."

This kind of thinking continues to this day and is also an important feature of Douban to attract users. Using the group on Douban as the basic model, users can obtain music, reading and other content services on Douban, and produce UGC content such as film reviews in movies and other sectors. This constitutes a complete content ecosystem. Ah Bei called this the platformization of Douban."We may not be the most professional food website, nor may we be the most professional clothing website, but we must be the largest pan-interest website."

But if the whole matter is reversed, the closed nature of the Douban system also determines that commercialization will face certain difficulties.

The first is that young users gathered in Douban in interest groups actually do not recognize commercialization. "In fact, I won't call myself a fashion blogger. I just share my experience on these social platforms, not to promote myself. So there is no special way to acquire users, let alone monetize them." A blogger who opened a column on Douban previously said in a conversation with a reporter from Sansheng that the most important thing about Douban is the diversity and professionalism of users, and simple sharing is more valuable to users.

The second is that the concept of community of interest is even less competitive in the Internet era. When many Internet companies chose to side with BAT and try to connect capital and monetize traffic, Douban missed out on several outlets such as mobile Internet, mobile radio, and online ticketing due to its limited scale. However, its huge user base failed to bring due value.

Based on this premise, the internal letter also particularly emphasizes that during the practical stage of Douban, users will continue the operating model of the previous interest group, but the management will be cut off from the revenue line.

Previously, PingWest gave a relevant evaluation of Douban in a report, believing that its users are the most worthless user group in the Internet era, and ranked with some users who oppose the commercialization of Station A. Because this group of users "kidnap website operators with love" and "keep their heads on and on the other hand," they cannot bring new traffic to the website, but also limit the website's forward development to a certain extent.

A user who joined Douban at the end of last year told reporters that there were indeed small circle problems on the Douban platform, but he was more concerned about whether the platform could continuously transmit the content that he was interested in.

Judging from this adjustment, dividing the user line into APP and main station to establish a project team for operation can at least maintain the relative independence of the user line and the revenue line in terms of structure. However, A Bei's positioning of Douban is still a "spiritual corner" for users. "My expectations for Douban cannot be described with numbers. I hope it can promote the diversified development of cultural products. For example, even if it is a very raw book, you can find people in Douban. No matter how unbelievable your hobbies are, you can also find people in the Douban group."

At

present, establishing Douban Time may be one of the most correct choices Douban made last year. While the rest of the business is still trying to find a suitable location between business and audiences, Douban Time has sold 10000 courses based on the first guest Beidao, while another Short Video program produced by the Douban Time team,"Pianzui" has been broadcast until its second season, with an average score of more than 7.0 in the two seasons.

"This year I spent 4,500 yuan. This year, Douban opened a Douban time and invited some well-known people in the industry to talk about some special topics, which were paid to listen to. I bought a few interesting topics to listen to. In addition, there are also paid items in Douban Reading." A veteran user who joined Douban in 2007 said.

Twelve years after its establishment, Douban, a slow-moving company, seems to have more understanding of commercialization. One sign is the launch of "Banzui" as a Short Video program and Douban Time's attempt to pay for knowledge. "The original Douban users are no longer so active and their time is divided. We need to reactivate these people." Yao Wenren, person in charge of Douban Time and vice president of content at Douban, explained the purpose of Douban Time's establishment. In her definition, Douban Time was born out of Douban's anxiety about user value mining and the desire of some Douban to regain the value of the platform."The reason why Douban Time is called Douban 'Time' is that it hopes to grow with users."

Douban Time

Since 9 o'clock in the early years, Douban said, and Alpha City failed. Since then, the radio and reading businesses have received little response. Douban and users have been looking for the best channel where each other can compromise. After a long period of running-in and mutual adaptation, knowledge payment and Short Video finally gave both parties this relief: the latter can provide interesting content that users want, and at the same time has a successful precedent in existing business models.

Take Douban Time as an example. Douban Time, its partner Movable-type Culture and poet Beidao jointly selected 52 poems from the first program "Wake Up", and then asked different poets to interpret the relevant works. The whole process took a lot of time in selecting content and instructors. However, Yao Wenren thought it was worth it in an interview at that time. The first episode of "Wake Up" also better balanced the tone of the platform and the needs of Douban users."Everyone is in a spiritual corner, enjoying his time, and poetry is a good entry point. Therefore, the first column,"Wake Up", is 'Poetry is like a beam of light to illuminate people who wake up.' Such a spiritual temperament is very suitable for Douban users."

In fact, output for diversified products has appeared intensively in Douban in the past. Like Douban Time, heavy investment means that Douban is also exploring the feasibility of taking into account user needs and commercial profits at the same time. In the past few years when Douban was questioned, Zhou Kui, a partner of Douban investor Sequoia Capital, once made pessimistic remarks on the commercialization of Douban,"Why can things that couldn't be done three years ago be done now when it is more difficult? I think this possibility is very small. This is a matter of team thinking and strategy."

After Douban Time achieved initial success, today's internal letter also revealed Douban's thinking model in gradually increasing investment in these businesses. At the same time, by shutting down some products and businesses that have not improved for a long time or have lost money on a small revenue scale, Douban can gain greater freedom, which may be Douban's one-time response to these comments.

The possibility of a pragmatic stage

After Douban seems to be on the right track for a pragmatic stage, the next goal is relatively clear.

A Bei also mentioned relevant information about the listing of Douban in his internal letter. According to this internal letter, the expected channel for Douban's listing will be returned overseas again, and cash flow will be the main management method for independent budgets. Based on this goal, each Douban line in the future will start independent budgets to manage their respective outputs and costs, and gradually replace the previous Head Count management; the traffic and resources produced by the user line will be used by the revenue line through internal accounting, and all are included in the accounting costs of each revenue line.

Although rumors of listing have never left Douban, and no more details have been leaked, this internal letter at least reveals that the matter is now in the preparatory stage. This is also in line with Abei's judgment in an earlier interview that Douban will develop to a larger scale."If people have paid more attention to Douban in the past ten years, then the main thing we have to do in the next ten years is to expand Douban services horizontally. content. Future Douban is a lifestyle brand and a brand of interest. After the expansion, users will become more diverse, and Douban users will each get what they need on this platform."

At present, it seems that Douban is building its own business story with community as its foundation and content services as its product line. But listing often means a complete reorganization of the business model. Douban, facing the market, needs a broader vision and more diversified profit channels to ensure that it has more say in the capital market.

Douban has been established for 12 years. During the 12 years, the Internet in China has alternated several times, but Douban seems to be still the "slow company" Douban

, but Ah Bei still believes that users are Douban's core value. To this day, all Douban products are still user-centered, and commercialization attempts will ensure that they are carried out within the acceptable range of users. "I have always felt that user value can bring business value. We are still making new innovative products that started from the first time, and may become products that everyone uses in three or four years." A Bei once explained his user-centered product view,"I also think that the life cycle of a product cannot be forced, and the transformation of commercial value cannot be forced when the life cycle is still in the early stages. The transformation of commercial value must be related to the external environment., rather than being forced to do something reluctant."

Listing means that Douban has diverse possibilities in the future, although some changes may not be accepted by users. After all, in the past 12 years, China's Internet city has changed its flag several times, but Abei is still the same Abei, and Douban is still the same Douban.

In the middle of this process, Douban has entered the mainstream view from the carnival of niche groups. Whether it is Douban film reviews or recent social events such as Xu Haojie, nearly 150 million Douban users have maintained observations and are highly active in social events. And Abei has always recognized the value of users. In the Xu Haojie incident that started in Douban, A Bei said in his circle of friends that such a voice was necessary,"The motive is clear and sincere, so there is no need to avoid suspicion or be afraid of getting into trouble. PR (public relations) and legal affairs are clearly moral reasons, and I am very proud."

From this perspective, users, as Douban's greatest value at present, will also make a decisive contribution to Douban's future.

Editor: Mary