Visual China.
Written by Wu Wenwu.Behind ByteDance's revenue surpassing Tencent's, and Pinduoduo's market value surpassing Alibaba's, an Internet era of accelerated iteration has come.
The back waves of the Yangtze River push the front waves, this sentence is being staged on the Internet.
At the end of 2023, there are many blockbuster news in the Internet industry, and there are two news items with the same keyword: transcendence, which has attracted attention and heated discussions.
The first is that ByteDance's revenue exceeds that of Tencent.
On December 20, according to foreign media The Information, ByteDance's sales in 2023 will increase by 30% to $110 billion, surpassing Tencent.
According to the analysis, from the perspective of revenue in the first half of the year, Byte's revenue in the second quarter increased by more than 40% to $29 billionRevenue for the first half of the year was about $54 billion. Last year, the company's annual revenue was $85 billion, while Tencent's financial report showed that in the first half of this year, its revenue was about 299.2 billion yuan, or about $41.3 billion, a year-on-year increase of 11%.
In response to the topic that ByteDance's revenue is expected to surpass Tencent, ByteDance did not respond, and Tencent certainly did not respond publicly.
The second is that Pinduoduo's market capitalization exceeds that of Alibaba.
On November 29, local time in the United States, the market value of Pinduoduo once rushed to $192.1 billion, exceeding Alibaba's $191.8 billion.
This short scene still aroused global attention and heated discussions, and some netizens commented in amazement that they had witnessed another era.
Ma Yun rarely responded on the company's intranet as "partner Ma Yun", saying that it is very good, I believe that everyone is watching and listening to Ali, and I firmly believe that Ali will change, Ali will change.
Bloomberg commented that this is a "watershed" in China's Internet industry, and also marks the rise of a generation of upstarts from Pinduoduo to ByteDance, who are disrupting the traditional areas of social networking and e-commerce.
In 2006, CCTV's "Win in China" business reality show invited some entrepreneurs to participate in the program, a young man named Zhang Xiangdong said in a program, "There is a HC network here, although I often use HC network, but I am personally not optimistic about HC network, only Alibaba will do the best in that industry in the future." ”
Guo Fansheng, the founder of HC, asked Zhang Xiangdong rhetorically, "I am so successful, you don't trust me, why should they trust you, a person who is less successful than me." ”
This ** has been circulating on the Internet to this day, telling the story between Alibaba and HC.
Founded in 1992, HC is China's B-end enterprise service provider and industry portal, and is also the first share of e-commerce services, and its founder Guo Fansheng is known as the "godfather of China's e-commerce".
HC was founded earlier than the Alibaba 1688 platform, when HC and Alibaba were competitors.
Alibaba started from small e-commerce and foreign trade, and entered the C2C market through **, while HC at that time still focused on the procurement of large-scale enterprises. In 2007, **surpassed eBay, and **sales exceeded 40 billion yuan that year.
Later, Alibaba developed and expanded, and became one of China's Internet giants, while HC Net, which used to be full of glory, now has no sense of existence.
Stories like Alibaba and HC have been staged in the history of China's Internet development.
Tencent QQ first imitated ICQ, and later surpassed Microsoft's MSN. The four major portals drove out Yahoo China. ** And e-commerce such as JD.com in the traditional PC era, Amazon, Wal-Mart and other e-commerce platforms have not left a piece in the Chinese market. WeChat was born, which made a number of social apps such as Feixin and Mi Chat collectively defeated.
Looking back on the development history of China's Internet industry for more than 30 years, each generation of Internet companies has faced a different environment and caught up with the special dividends of that era.
The first generation of the Internet eats the dividends of poor information and information flow, and the four major portals of NetEase, Sohu, Sina and Tencent established in the 90s of the last century are among the representatives.
In 2003, the year of SARS, Alibaba was founded, and JD.com was also born in this year, accurately seizing the e-commerce opportunities in the Internet PC era, and now the two have developed into the first generation of e-commerce giants.
Later, a new generation of Internet companies appeared, Zhang Yiming established ByteDance in 2012, launched Toutiao, and later launched Douyin, and now TikTok is popular all over the world.
Duan Yongping's disciple Huang Zheng founded the e-commerce platform Pinhaohao in 2015, and in 2016, it was integrated and reorganized into Pinduoduo, and it has risen strongly with the low-cost killer feature of "social ** + chopping a knife", and now challenges Alibaba and JD.com.
At the beginning, Tencent didn't care about bytes, and JD.com and Alibaba didn't care about Pinduoduo, until the later children grew up and held the "dragon slaying knife" in their hands, they didn't feel the threat and pressure.
It is the times that have made Alibaba and JD.com, and it is also the times that have made ByteDance and Pinduoduo.
At the end of 2022, Liu Qiangdong, the founder of JD.com, emphasized at an internal meeting that "ensuring low prices based on quality and service is the most important success in the past, and it is also the only basic in the future."
In 2023, JD will fully implement the "low price" strategy, launch tens of billions of subsidies, open up POP investment, reduce freight, etc., and now JD will implement a comprehensive low price, and JD will shout a low price, which will surprise the market.
Alibaba has been moving continuously this year, launching the "1+6+n" organizational reform in March, and in September, Daniel Zhang brushed his sleeves away, Tsai Chongxin took over as chairman of Alibaba's board of directors, Wu Yongming took over as CEO, and Alibaba entered an era of change.
On December 20, Alibaba announced that Wu Yongming, CEO of the group and chairman of Taotian Group, is also the CEO of Taotian Group.
According to 36 Krypton reports, Wu Yongming has made a series of capital plans for several businesses that have been spun off, Hema has considered **, Ele.me may have new capital moves, and Youku is considering merging into Alibaba Pictures. Although Hema later responded that the news was untrue, it still caused speculation from the outside world.
Earlier, in May this year, Alibaba founder Ma Yun convened a small-scale communication meeting with the heads of various businesses of Taotian Group, Ma Yun said, the next is the opportunity of ** instead of Tmall, Ali e-commerce should "return**".
When Ma Yun shouted "return to **" and Liu Qiangdong emphasized that "low prices are the big killer of JD.com", these two traditional e-commerce big brothers recognized the strong competition from Pinduoduo and Douyin e-commerce.
Douyin, Kuaishou and other short ** apps have become popular, changing the way people used to obtain information, and live streaming and live e-commerce have completely changed the e-commerce retail industry.
Traditional e-commerce is struggling to retain consumers, with Alibaba's e-commerce platforms, including ** and Tmall, seeing a 7% drop in gross merchandise volume (GMV) — the total amount of goods sold on the platform. At the same time, TikTok's parent company, ByteDance's streaming platform, Douyin, has grown by more than three-quarters.
Jingdong's success in the past relied on product quality and fast logistics, and the success of the first looked at information matching, building a platform, when the later Pinduoduo successfully broke through by low prices, and Douyin live broadcast with interest in e-commerce, with an immersive and interactive experience, completely changed the scene.
Each generation of Internet companies has a different growth background, a different business model, and a different development model.
For example, the first generation of e-commerce consumers is facing the latter, while Pinduoduo and Douyin have achieved full age coverage of consumers.
Technology updates and iterations and application environments are different, from PCs to mobile phones, with different application scenarios, different consumption characteristics and habits.
Technological progress has played a key driving role in the development of the Internet industry, and although big data has always existed, it has completely changed the industry in the mobile Internet scenario.
For example, the push of news data flow has changed the traditional portal** and news APP, and for example, the short** accurate push has a strong attraction.
No matter how it changes, the three elements of people, goods and places will not change, and consumers' shopping needs will always exist, but consumption will change with the general environment.
In the future, an Internet era of accelerated iteration is coming, whether it is JD.com, Alibaba, or later Byte and Pinduoduo, they must continue to accelerate change and innovation.