Not long ago, the news of "Quark was fined 500,000 yuan" spread on the Internet, and "Netcom China" WeChat made it clear that the "Quark" platform destroyed the network ecology, and ordered the Quark platform to immediately make comprehensive and in-depth rectifications and seriously deal with the relevant responsible persons. Has this punishment been managed to the quark app?It can be said that the management has arrived, and it can also be said that it has not been affected.
The reason why Quark was named is that it is most likely involved in vulgar pornography, and the search results present a large number of ** pornographic information, and recommend pornographic and vulgar keywords to users. However, after being named, Quark's advertising on other platforms has not changed in any wayFor example, on the Kuaishou platform, the advertising slogan "Free ** resources, let you see cool", with a beautiful girl dressed in coolness, it is still irresistible;"It's all adults, I don't know, where to watch high-quality movies and television", with the pictures of beauties**and**, the same rubbing edges.
Although advertising on third-party platforms is still on the same page as pornography, it is not a long-term solution. Perhaps Quark is also aware of this problem and has begun to seek transformation. On December 22, titanium ** reported,Quark has already begun to lay out big health, and has begun to test a large model application called "Quark Health Assistant"., has great health become the first step of quark introspection?
The sense of presence is low, and the edges are eye-catching
Just two weeks after Quark was fined, when it was still in the middle of the world, on November 16, at Alibaba's third-quarter financial report meeting, Quark directly reversed the decline and became Alibaba's first batch of strategic innovation businesses in one fell swoop. From verbal criticism to Ali's support for the future star, Quark went from hell to heaven.
Many people have vague perceptions of quarks, Some people's memory of quark is the intelligent search of the college entrance examination volunteer search, and some people are rubbing the edge of the platform. When many people still don't know about it, it has become the rising star of the smart track, what kind of application is Quark?
In 2014 Ali spent 43The acquisition of UC Youshi for 500 million US dollars was the highest acquisition of the Internet in China at that time. Especially after the strong rise of WeChat, it has become the UC browser of Ali's family hospital, and the market volume has gradually decreased. However, UC has not sunk and is still groping for how to regain an Internet ticket. In August 2016, UC Browser incubated an application - Quark
Minimalist style is the dream of product people and users, but it is not easy to achieve. It's like Evan Williams left Twitter and also wanted to create a simple and efficient collaboration platform Medium, which has a slight reputation and is well recognized by the Kochi crowd, but it has not been widely promoted. In particular, the failure of commercialization in 2017 has greatly damaged the confidence of minimalist products.
In 2018, Quark's browser woke up and began to transform into search. Search may be the best commercial product in the Internet era, and with the advantage of search, 1236 can still be obtained in 20227.5 billion yuan in revenue. Whether it's the PC era or the mobile era, the advantages in searching for this track are almost unshakable. Sogou, who has been pursuing for many years, finally ended up "selling himself". Unlike traditional search, quark is defined as intelligent search. Searching for this thing, there seems to be no demand from users outside, and it was not until 2020 that the number of quark users exceeded 10 million.
2020 is a turning point year for Quark, with users exceeding 10 million and the business becoming independent from UC, giving it a huge amount of autonomy. From 2020 to 2023, the annual user growth rate will be more than 200%, and as of November 2023, Quark has served more than 100 million users. With the positioning of work and study, can Quark really break 100 million users in three years?
Behind this, it may have something to do with pornography. In 2016, in the national special rectification action on the use of cloud disks to disseminate ** pornographic information, Ali's UC network disk once stopped network disk storage services. The related "inventory" lasted for two years, and it was not until 2018 that Ali quietly launched the UC network disk.
From the perspective of user age, Quark user group is very young. Jiang Guanguan, the technical director of Quark, once revealed to the outside world that more than 50% of Quark users are young users under the age of 25. Young people under the age of 25 are indeed closely related to work and study, but they also seem to be more attracted to pornography.
Some netizens posted their own "free learning materials", and the learning content does not seem to be like the learning materials in the textbook, but like the physiological learning materials. Or, the reason why Mr. Cang is called Mr. Cang is also because of his words and deeds.
In any case, the quark, who sticks to the new forces of intelligence on the one hand, and plays the side ball on the other hand, has been punished. Quark is making adjustments, but two months is too short for the adjustment to be timely. Alibaba's expectations for quarks and search are also worth understanding, but it is necessary to intervene appropriately in the rubbing behavior.
It is also difficult for Quark to have differentiated advantages
Ali and Jack Ma have always been looking forward to great health, Ma Yun once said that the next person who can surpass me must appear in the health industry. Ma Yun's confidence comes from data, according to Shangpu Consulting data, the market size of China's big health industry will reach 127 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 126%, accounting for 11 percent of GDP5%。
In terms of business, in 2014, Ali began to lay out the field of big health, and Ali's investment is also obvious. Ali Health has become one of the largest pharmaceutical e-commerce companies in China, and its 2023 annual report shows that Ali Health's total revenue is 2676.3 billion RMB. In terms of smart healthcare, Alibaba Health has launched an AI open platform, attracting many medical AI companies to settle in and lay out the future in advance.
During the pandemic, public health awareness has begun to rise. For enterprises, now is the critical moment to enter this track. There is no doubt that Quark, who was hurt by pornography, met the right time and place in the big health industry. Search and medical care are a natural fit, the key is how to provide accurate answers.
In the past, the biggest problem with this process was that it was impossible to confirm the accuracy of the search results. Through human intervention, is a solution. Launched a health dictionary, invited a large number of experts to settle in, and solved the problems presented by the search through staff and technical audits. In 2022, the health online medical network covered 60% of provinces and cities. However, there is a lot of manpower behind this, which is lacking in Quark, even if it is the UC behind Quark, there are less than 600 insured employees.
With the precipitation of intelligent technology, this problem is expected to be overcome. In November, Quark released its self-developed large model, and took health, creation and other fields as the first application scenarios。As an Ali company, self-developed large models instead of relying on Ali are a waste of resources on the one hand, and technical reliability also needs to be verified by the market on the other hand.
According to the titanium ** report, after the Quark app entered the main complaint, the first search result was the AIGC content provided by the "Quark Health Assistant", but the content was not provided by Quark, but a third party**. Behind every piece of medical data, it is related to a person's health, and even the rise and fall of a family. Quark needs to solve the accuracy of the data, at least professional medical related personnel, otherwise once there is a problem, it will be difficult for Quark to escape responsibility.
Deep Atom is not optimistic about Quark's big health attempts. First of all, from the business, the blockade that cannot be broken. It can't be the search that beats the search. Moreover, whether in terms of operational capabilities or from a technical level, quarks are difficult to match.
In the past 20 years, countless entrepreneurs have wanted to seize market opportunities through the health Q&A system, but none of them have succeeded. Although there have been breakthroughs in current technology, previously, algorithms relying on decision trees, based on the patient's complaint information, can also solve some simple diagnoses and **. Users are insensitive to the technical side, and it is difficult for users to feel technological breakthroughs
The innate advantage of Internet companies is not to solve the routine questions of Q&A, but to solve private problems, such as sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS. What Quark wants to do is not just a content provider, it needs to be more deeply involved。Quark's tricky behavior is difficult to last. Do you search for diseases after watching the film?Reversing the reputation after the Wei Zexi incident is the in-depth participation in the post-consultation process, which has attracted the recognition of many tertiary hospitals and grassroots hospitals.
Maybe it's because he tasted the good of rubbing the edges, and Quark didn't want to work hard even if he bet on great health. However, medical and health care is a special track, and any cutting corners will hardly achieve final results. The era of general artificial intelligence is coming, and the quark that is "stuck in intelligent search" is still full of thorns on the road.