Bai Yang believes that Douban's biggest killer lies in its three-year database and core user accumulation. Take the book review as an example. According to He Xun IT, Douban has accumulated more than two million book reviews in three years. A large number of people may not be able to write good reviews, but Bai Yang feels that those who have the ability to write good reviews have become users of Douban, and they are active and loyal users. Like VeryCD in China, this community is rich in high-quality content, forming an underground industrial chain from processing and manufacturing to circulation. The authors of Douban's book reviews or film reviews have also formed their own chains and relationships. Compared with the competitive pressure of other SNS websites, Bai Yang suspects that these SNS with movie channels may not bring new users to this website even if they can make users stay longer.
It is worth reflecting that there have never been absolutely loyal users on the Internet, and Bai Yang's expectations for Douban users are inevitably optimistic. I still remember that in the blog war towards Web2.0 in the era of Web 1.0, China, an energetic blogger at first, finally lost to the celebrity blog and blog moving function of the portal. The portal website has abundant funds and resources. When funds are scattered to R&D departments and resources cover public figures with great appeal, it is difficult for emerging websites to compete with them because they lack recognition and brand, and mature profit model as capital support. However, the launch of these functions has caused great controversy within the Douban team. What is the positioning of Douban, and in which direction should the team develop? Douban has serious internal differences. The opposition advocates that Douban should focus on what it is good at, making books, movies and music thorough, rather than integrating the advantages and functions of other websites. Bai Yang himself stood on the side of the "integration faction". He thinks that communication between users is very important, and he can help users find more good books, movies and music better, which is consistent with Douban's positioning as a "discovery platform". Because, as a "discovery platform", Douban has no rivals. What Bai Yang has discovered by himself is a brand-new market. He believes that the communication between users is very important to the current situation of Douban, and sns website should be used if it is useful. On the road of utilitarianism, Bai Yang firmly stands on the position of pragmatism. After a heated debate, the group headed by Bai Yang won. In April, Douban launched a more sns website function-diary. Its significance lies not only in strengthening communication between users, but also in giving users a platform to express their opinions. Bai Yang's ideal state may be to let Douban users' comments form the right to speak, thus forming influence.
A few days after the diary function was launched, tens of thousands of diaries were born. Douban will no longer have the embarrassing situation that many users don't know where to put the article after writing it: an article entitled "Dear Mr. Said, do you wear long pants?" The main content of the essay is about the different habits of wearing long trousers at home and abroad, but this article was placed as a book review under Orientalism, and it was unintentional; Another user set up a group that only he can post as his own Douban blog.
Bai Yang's consistent innovation philosophy is: start with the simplest. At present, the diary function can only have words, but this has not brought a leap in traffic to Douban. Douban will gradually add diary maps and other functions in the future. Bai Yang watercress also needs you to discover slowly. Bai Yang, the founder of Douban.com.
Since 2006, the scale of watercress has increased by four times every year. In the early years, Douban users had a high degree of similarity, and the books, movies and music recommended by everyone were in line with each other's tastes. However, the current composition of users is too diverse. Some people recommend books very much, while others may not like them. For example, a book that has won great honor in the field of physics is of little value to a historian. Douban examined its principle of "the core content revolves around personal generation" and decided to gradually adopt the decision of "decentralization" to weaken the media characteristics of Douban. As for the specific practices, Bai Yang will delete some public contents, such as home page recommendation. After removing these contents, netizens who want to know about good books, movies and music must register as Douban users and provide their own hobbies. Then according to the information provided by users, Douban recommended books, movies and music to users through careful algorithm. At the same time, "decentralization" provides a huge wealth for Douban's secondary financing: the increase in the number of users and the provision of user information. After Douban deleted the recommendation from the homepage, many netizens lost the free lunch of "just watching and not registering". In this way, more than 5 million fixed netizens living outside Douban are expected to register as official users of Douban. After users provide their own interests, they get literary products recommended by Douban, which also provides the necessary conditions for Douban to complete accurate advertising.
Douban In 2006, com received an angel investment of 2 million from IDGVC, and then there was no money to settle in. In 2006, Douban and Thousand Oaks exchanged shares interactively, which was confirmed as a rumor by Bai Yang. Bai Yang believes that the amount of financing should be commensurate with the size of the website. Douban has a large scale and is preparing for a new round of financing. "Decentralization" has brought a large number of users and comprehensive user information to Douban, providing the best preparation for financing. The compulsory user registration and information provision brought by decentralization will inevitably lead to the loss of users, which is only a matter of quantity. A large quantity is a subversive disaster for douban.
Is decentralization wealth or disaster? Only give time to verify. For management, Bai Yang doesn't have much ambition, but Douban.com, which was widely praised for its lack of advertising pages in the past, may formally introduce the advertising business model. The traditional profit model of douban. Com is to hang the logo and price of different book buying websites under each book. Every time a user enters a large online mall like Dangdang and Zhuo Yue through the link of Douban, the two parties will share the profits according to the pre-agreed proportion. Such a profit model can satisfy the operation of a small workshop. However, when the scale of Douban grows, the team expands and the cost expands, such a single income channel may not be able to meet its operating costs. Strengthening commercialization is the inherent impulse of douban expansion.
Douban traditional channel income is shrinking day by day. First of all, the pressure comes from the change of netizens' reading habits. More and more netizens are used to downloading e-books. After Sina, Tencent and other portals opened free online reading channels, more netizens lost their desire to buy high-priced paper books. The change of netizens' reading habits from paper books to e-books has weakened the business model of book sharing. Secondly, various rebate websites have also affected the profitability of Douban. Many "cunning" users read detailed and valuable book recommendations on Douban, and get a certain percentage of commission after entering the online bookstore through the rebate website. All these have weakened the traditional profitability of Douban. Bai Yang found a solution. He believes that in the future, Douban will mostly rely on accurate advertising for profit. The book price comparison function is very convenient for users, and its income is only a natural income, and it will not be the main source of income in the future.
Douban has begun to try advertising. For example, on the right side of the page of The Da Vinci Code, there are pictures and texts of "Recommended by Cooperative Publishing House" and "Tears of Elephants". Douban's advertisement is delivered accurately through algorithm. For example, the advertisement for the new book "Tears of Elephant" will never appear next to all books, because Douban calculated in advance that the lovers of "Tears of Elephant" and "The Da Vinci Code" have the highest overlap, and then put the advertisement of "Tears of Elephant" on the page of "The Da Vinci Code". The premise of advertising revenue is that the traffic of advertising should be large enough. Under Douban, the traffic of books, movies and music channels in Douban is not as big as expected. Thereby affecting the effect of accurate delivery. How to turn popularity into profits and recover costs not only involves the operation of Douban, but also affects its positioning.
A "group" channel with a function similar to Baidu Post Bar accounts for one-third of the total traffic of Douban. Wheat field, president of Ant Network, estimated in the article "The Truth of Douban" that the group traffic of Douban even reached more than 70% of the whole station. Many topics of Douban.com's popular group are stars, health care, beauty, clothes and so on. Miss vivi, the communication manager of Douban. Com, saying that in the past, the media paid attention to books, movies and music, but now the media pays more attention to groups, and another media specially made a report on "Douban domestic cosmetics group". These topics have little to do with books, movies and music, and the hot discussion in the group can't feed back the flow of books, movies and music.
Theoretically, the products involved in these hot topics can be extracted into articles, and then the business model of books, movies and music can be adopted. But Bai Yang doesn't intend to create books for these popular products. He thinks there are so few such things that no one has never heard of a brand of mobile phone.
Therefore, for Baidu Post Bar to introduce advertisements, Douban did not introduce this business model into the group. Because it does not meet the positioning of douban. The "discovery" of com. However, in order to seek development, Douban must solve the financing problem, so the secondary financing has been put on the agenda.
Small team gene
President Bai Yang.
Small team combat is the characteristic of douban. Douban 1 year ago, there were only two people, and two years ago, there were only five people. Bai Yang believes that a web2.0 website does not need people to generate content, but the number of teams is commensurate with its functions. They just set up a stage for users to perform, instead of jumping on it themselves. In the third year of Douban's launch, the team has about 25 people. Only one winter, Bai Yang went to colleges and universities to hold job fairs, which expanded many talents he was satisfied with. Douban Com, which has just moved to a new office, can only accommodate 50 people at most. Although the team is still expanding, he doesn't want to move any more.
Dilemma and the cost of growth
Douban faces two bottlenecks in the future. One bottleneck is that Mr. Xie Wen, a former CEO of Lianzhong, He Xun and Yahoo, said when commenting on Douban. Com thinks it is elegant to make friends with books, but it is unrealistic: in real life, female college students meet to talk about cosmetics and boyfriends, and rarely discuss books. Books, movies and music are only a small part of life, which is the limitation of the popularity of douban. Bai Yang thinks that there are various ways to make friends in Douban, which can be through groups, not necessarily books. All life-related issues will be discussed in Douban Group. However, Bai Yang does not intend to summarize popular products such as cosmetics, mobile phones and clothing into a book.
Bai Yang likes reading. Douban employees have a sum of money every week to pay for the books they want to buy. For a bookish president, it is a great challenge for him to be willing to make the website a grassroots. Looking at the Internet in China, every network product has the shadow of foreign successful precedent. Tencent QQ is to ICQ；; Baidu search is to Google; ; The campus network is to Facebook; ; Taobao is to eBay ... Douban is the only exception. Douban didn't copy other websites at first, and built the framework completely according to Bai Yang's ideas. However, this also gives Douban a second bottleneck.
A completely innovative website is in an absolute advantage in the competition. Maybe it has no rivals. But it also means helplessness. Without comparison, it is difficult to see its own shortcomings. When encountering difficulties, there is no previous record to learn from, so we can only grope for our own solutions. Moreover, it is impossible to predict what impact every subtle change will have on the future. Just like in 2006, Douban tried to open the travel version. After opening up, it was found that its development track deviated from the original intention of Douban. Douban originally intended to recommend more than 20,000 new scenic spots in China, but in fact Douban found that only some heavy travelers would pay attention to these unknown scenic spots. In addition, the greatest value of travel is consultation, such as transportation and accommodation, rather than discovery. Therefore, the development of tourism channel has stopped, and it has been hidden in a corner of Douban. Douban has been constantly innovating and trying new things.
However, if innovation is too fast, it will cost you. Some netizens reported that they forgot where a button was put without going to Douban for a few days. Bai Yang said that the key task of Douban at present is to improve the framework and adjust the structure, hoping to solve the problems encountered during the adjustment period as soon as possible.