In 2023, the wind of the times is changing rapidly, and it is dizzying. With the continuous advancement of technology, the technology Internet industry is undergoing unprecedented changes. In this context, large manufacturers have to re-examine their business layout to cope with the rapid changes in the market and the fierce competition in the industry.
Therefore, in the past year, many major technology and Internet companies have made business adjustments, showing a resolute attitude towards unprofitable businesses and grasping new market trends and forward-looking layout.
Kuaishou: Kuaikan stopped operating
On the afternoon of January 6, Kuaishou's ** information app Kuaikan issued an announcement, announcing that it would completely stop operating on February 6 due to business adjustments, and all user information data would be deleted at that time. The creator's work information must be exported by February 6.
Kuaikan is a content platform based on personalized recommendation algorithms, which includes **, short** multiple content channels, and the content type is daily to meet the daily news reading needs of most people. The app is highly similar to Toutiao in terms of content and form, including the promotion mode of gold coins.
Kuaikandi APP began to be launched on major application platforms in May 2019. According to Qimai data, as of now, the total volume of the whole platform is only 6600 million times. It does not rank well in the list of apps of the same type on the Android platform.
Meituan: The ride-hailing business gave up self-operation
On March 6, Wang Xing, the founder, chairman and CEO of Meituan, issued an internal email saying that after the S-TEAM research and decision, the online car-hailing business was adjusted and transferred to the Meituan platform, and Zhang Xingyuan, the person in charge of online car-hailing, reported to Li Shubin. At the same time, Meituan announced that its ride-hailing business will abandon its self-operated ride-hailing business and fully shift to an aggregation model.
According to public information, Meituan's taxi-hailing business first started in 2017 and was first put into trial operation in NanjingIn 2018, it officially landed in Shanghai and began to expand to the national market. The ride-hailing business was personally led by Wang Huiwen, former senior vice president of Meituan, and started the usual cash-burning subsidy war in the online car-hailing industry. At that time, Meituan's taxi in Nanjing took an 8% fee for drivers. Drivers registered in Shanghai can enjoy "zero commission" within three months of opening.
However, due to the impact of industry regulation, the development of Meituan taxi did not go as smoothly as expected. In 2018, Wang Huiwen said that Meituan has been evaluating which businesses have a higher input-output ratio of resources to invest in. Judging from the current assessment of the online car-hailing business, Meituan will not increase investment in online car-hailing.
JD.com: Southeast Asia's e-commerce business adjustment
In 2016 and 2018, JD.com successively deployed e-commerce business in Indonesia and Thailand. Different from the model of platform-based e-commerce such as Lazada, JD.com has basically copied its domestic self-operated e-commerce model in Southeast Asia, and equipped the development of its e-commerce business with perfect logistics and distribution capabilities, and improved the shopping experience of local consumers through first-class licensed goods and fast fulfillment.
Due to high costs, fierce competition and performance that did not meet expectations, the official ** order service on JD Thailand's e-commerce official website will close at 11:59 pm on February 15, 2023, and orders for other stores within ** will be closed and terminated at 11:59 pm on March 3 this year, and the platform after-sales service center will be open until March 31. JD Indonesia's e-commerce official website will stop accepting orders from users from February 15, 2023, and all services will cease on March 31, 2023.
After years of deep cultivation in Southeast Asia, JD.com noticed that Southeast Asia's backward ** chain infrastructure has more room for improvement. At present, JD.com, through its subsidiary, JD Industrial Development, has invested and managed 20 logistics parks in Indonesia, which are mainly located in core industrial logistics zones such as Jakarta, Chigarang and Karawang, where a large number of processing and manufacturing industries and automotive industries are concentrated. In addition, in 2022, JD Logistics will also deploy its own overseas warehouse in Malaysia. In Vietnam, JD Industrial Development has also invested in smart industrial park projects under construction in Long An province in the south and Hai Phong in the north.
NetEaseHighway of knowledgeShut down
NetEase Knowledge Highway is a creator platform focusing on pan-knowledge and pan-life shortening** launched by NetEase, which was officially launched on January 21, 2021. Knowledge Highway has made certain achievements in the field of knowledge payment, but due to the adjustment of the company's business, the platform will completely stop operating at 00:00 on July 27, 2023, and the ** content stored in NetEase Knowledge Highway will be removed from the shelves and emptied.
NetEase said that for users who still want to continue to publish and disseminate creative content on NetEase products after the NetEase Knowledge Highway platform is suspended, they can choose to use NetEase Knowledge Highway registration account information to log in to the NetEase Account ** open platform to continue publishing creative content.
At present, there are many knowledge payment platforms, including get, zhihu, etc. These platforms are all vying for users' attention and willingness to pay. At the same time, users' demand for knowledge payment is also changing, and they are paying more and more attention to the usefulness of content.
shein：Third-party sellers are allowed to settle in
In May, SHEIN officially announced that it would promote the platform model SHEIN Marketplace in the global market. Prior to this, SHEIN adopted an independent station self-management model, mainly operating its own brand. Now, in order to meet customers' demand for product diversity, the platform will allow other brand merchants to sell their own brands through the channels built by SHEIN.
SHEIN will introduce more third-party merchants through the platform model, and after merchants settle in, they can see the real-time performance and sales of goods, and at the same time, with the help of SHEIN's on-demand and demand trends, etc., to enhance their comprehensive competitiveness in the global market.
Pinduoduo: Temu officially charges sellers a service fee
In October, Temu, a cross-border e-commerce platform owned by Pinduoduo, launched a new "Customer Service Outsourcing Service Agreement" to sellers. According to the agreement, the service rate of 5 thousandths is interpreted by the outside world as a signal that the platform is starting to charge commissions.
This new initiative may add some cost pressure for sellers. But on the other hand, this also means that the temu platform is gradually realizing commercial operation, providing sellers with more complete services and support. In addition, charging commissions is also one of the common business models of e-commerce platforms, so this can also be seen as a necessary adjustment made by the Temu platform in the process of exploring its own profit model.
It is worth noting that there are a number of other details that are also stipulated in this new agreement. For example, if a seller's sale is successful and a refund is generated, the service fee will not be charged againHowever, if the seller's sale fails or a refund occurs, the service fee charged will not be refunded. Although this clause may seem a bit strict, it also helps to protect the rights and interests of both the platform and the seller. At the same time, Party B hereby unconditionally and irrevocably agrees and authorizes the platform to directly deduct the corresponding service fee from the sales price on behalf of the payee.
This means that the platform will deduct the corresponding service fee from the seller's sales price, and the seller will not be able to get the deducted fee again. In general, this new initiative of the temu platform not only reflects its emphasis on the service quality and user experience of sellers, but also prepares for its future commercial development.
Ali: "Double 12" event cancelled;The Damo Academy dismantled the quantum laboratory
At the end of March this year, in order to maximize the vitality of the organization, Ali launched the "1+6+N" organizational reform: under Alibaba Group, six major business groups and a number of business companies such as Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, **Tmall Business, Local Life, Cainiao, International Digital Commerce, and Dawen Entertainment were established, and they will set up boards of directors to face the market independently and implement the CEO responsibility system.
On November 16, Alibaba released its financial report for the second quarter of fiscal year 2024, and at the same time as the financial report, there were two shocking news, Alibaba will no longer promote the complete spin-off of the cloud intelligence group, and at the same time, the initial public offering plan of Hema Xiansheng has been suspended.
On November 24th, the **merchant service hall showed that the "Double 12" event was cancelled this year, and the large-scale platform event "**Year-end Good Price Festival" was held in December this year. On December 9th, ** opened the year-end good price festival, and the specific discount is 30 yuan off for 200 yuan. However, the Good Price Festival did not attract much attention, and there were few topics about "Double 12" on social platforms.
On November 26, a number of ** reports said that in order to further promote the coordinated development of quantum science and technology, the Damo Academy and Zhejiang University jointly developed quantum technology, and the Damo Academy donated the quantum laboratory and transferable quantum experimental instruments and equipment to Zhejiang University, and opened it to other universities and scientific research institutions. It is understood that the predecessor of the Quantum Laboratory of the Damo Academy is the Quantum Computing Laboratory, which was jointly established by Alibaba Cloud and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in July 2015.
Xiaohongshu: shut down its e-commerce platform "Little Oasis".
Due to business adjustments, Xiaohongshu's e-commerce platform "Little Oasis" ceased operations on October 1, 2023, stopped selling products, and officially closed "Little Oasis" on October 31. Xiaohongshu said that for follow-up after-sales problems of "Little Oasis" products, consumers can contact customer service through the historical orders on the product page of the "Little Oasis" channel. After the store is officially closed, consumers can still apply for after-sales feedback through the order page.
It is understood that at the beginning of 2022, Xiaohongshu launched its self-operated e-commerce project "Little Oasis", which initially focused on comprehensive categories such as beauty, skin care products, fragrance, and fashion and home furnishings. Soon after, as the topic of outdoor camping continued to be hot, the number of notes and topics related to Xiaohongshu soared, and once surpassed the beauty category, and the platform immediately changed its positioning and turned to deep cultivation of camping, land chong, skiing, cycling, hiking and other sports scenes.
As for the reason for the closure of "Little Oasis", in the farewell letter, Xiaohongshu said that "Little Oasis" failed to achieve the expected goal of maximizing everyone's outdoor needs in the process of business exploration and development.
ByteDance: The game business is "severed".
On November 27, ByteDance's game brand Chaoxi Lightyear said that some UGC and AIGC projects under development have been retained, and games that have been launched and performed well are seeking to be divestedProjects that have not yet been launched, except for a small number of innovative projects and related technology projects, will be shut down.
In the self-developed game sector, Chaoxi Lightyear has four self-developed studios, all of which have more eye-catching projects, namely Beijing Oasis Studio (project "Crystal Nucleus"), Shanghai 101 Studio (project "Flower and Mountain Heart Moon") and Shanghai Wushuang Studio (project "HNA King: Bloody Route"), and Hangzhou Jiangnan Studio (project "Planet: Restart"). Among them, "One Piece: Bloody Route" is the first product with a revenue of more than 100 million US dollars in the domestic market, with a turnover of more than 400 million yuan in the first month after its launch in April 2021.
In the same month, Netcom also planned to spend $4 billion to buy Mutong Technology from Tencent in 2021 to implement the strategic adjustment of the game business. On the evening of November 27, in response to the news that Mu Tong was **, Mu Tong CEO Yuan Jing publicly responded internally, saying that Mu Tong will continue to operate independently and will be deeply involved in the game industry for a long time.
In 2018, ByteDance decided to establish a game division, and then expanded rapidly through the model of "** acquisition + poaching". Judging from the latest developments of ByteDance, the company has focused on the e-commerce business, and the focus of the game business has also shifted from its own R&D and distribution to a more efficient way of selling traffic to game manufacturers.