2020 Review: Seven New Trends of the Internet

Behind every new trend, there are unspeakable opportunities and anxiety.

In 2007, after 20 years of business, Kingsoft finally listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Lei Jun's mood at the helm is complicated. After 16 years of hard work in Jinshan, after a fierce battle with Microsoft and a series of domestic competitors, Jinshan finally "come ashore". Although the cultivation has achieved positive results, as the first generation of entrepreneurs in Zhongguancun, Lei Jun, the "code poet", missed the subsequent Internet entrepreneurial wave. The four major portals and the BAT three giants' success in a shorter period made Lei Jun learn from the experience of "homeopathy". For the four-character motto, "Xiaomi" was turned around and entered the field of mobile Internet.

In 2014, the masses started their businesses and innovated. Zhang Yiming, Wang Xing, and Su Hua, who were unknown in the PC Internet era, tried their best on Zhichun Road. They caught up with the mobile Internet era brought about by the outbreak of smartphones and used a shorter period. Capital letters of own company.

In 2020, a new crown epidemic has affected people's normal lives. This crisis has also allowed Internet companies to see the accelerated process of online and offline integration and realize that the opportunities contained therein are no less than when the Internet was first established.

Online education, remote office, community group buying, live e-commerce, and new consumer brands have successively formed outlets, and these new trends formed by the flow of capital, talents, and companies may create new industries and platforms shortly.

New Trend 1: Digital Acceleration

At the end of the year, a game called "Cyberpunk 2077" became popular on the Internet. After playing it, people sighed that we have entered the future 50 years in advance.

People in the future will reminisce about the beginning of the cyber era and most likely will not miss the new crown epidemic in early 2020. If the Internet was just a gadget for people to kill time before, this epidemic has made the concept of "Internet = life" deeply rooted in people's hearts.

A health code provided by one person provides data protection for the prevention and control of the epidemic; Wuhans closure of the city has allowed community group buying, which was originally a falsificationtrend, to become popular again; office software such as Tencent Meeting and Enterprise WeChat has temporarily increased the number to maintain the stability of peoples remote office work. Tens of thousands of servers; DingTalk, an office software, was beaten "one star" by angry primary school students in the app store because of its online classroom function.

From daily outings, grocery shopping to office and school, the digitization of peoples lives has been accelerated by the epidemic. In the past, for the offline service industry, increasing online business was the icing on the cake. In this epidemic, people found that online business may become a life-saving straw; while Internet companies that were previously obsessed with online business were intensified because of the epidemic. The competition for offline traffic entry.

Twenty years ago, cyberspace on the Internet was novel and cool. Going online was to escape reality. Twenty years later, the integration of online and offline has begun to accelerate. Cyberpunk may no longer take 50 years.

New Trend 2: Electric Vehicle Consensus

Tesla and Weilai, the two first Chinese and American companies to enter the smart electric vehicle industry, are now the companies with the highest market value among the world and Chinese car companies. And just a year ago, not only was it not mainstream in the capital market but even the new energy vehicle was criticized by many people. At present, the activeness of newly built cars in the capital market represents to a certain extent that people have gradually reached a consensus on the fact that "intelligence and new energy belong to the future trend."

Of course, some people will doubt that even the largest new car company, Tesla, has a year-old car production of 500,000, how can it compete with a century-old car company that has sold several million vehicles? But, on the contrary, Tesla's current market value is more than 600 billion U.S. dollars, which is equivalent to 3 Toyotas, 14 BMWs, or 8 Mercedes-Benzes. It has firmly established the world's largest market value of auto companies.

Questioning is questioning, the stock price of a new car is still soaring as if riding a rocket. Why does this happen?

A fundamental reason is that the internal structure of the car has undergone earth-shaking changes. The electrical and electronic architecture of the traditional car is destined to not have much computing power for the whole car, nor can it interact with the cloud. The whole car relies on mechanical and first-level electronic calculation methods. Smart cars are designed from the very beginning to be a centralized and intelligent form, using a small number of chips to control more functions, and on this basis, it can be expanded to various fields involved in smart cars, such as autonomous driving, such as V2X, and so on.

A summary is that automobiles have transformed from mechanical products to technological products. The latter is precisely what traditional car companies can hardly match because the underlying logic needs to be reconstructed. This is also the reason why traditional car companies cannot come up with a comparable product in a short period to compete with new cars.

Coupled with the policy influence of various countries, fuel vehicles are destined to be replaced by more environmentally friendly engines and motors in the next few years. Such changes in the environment or the car itself are the incentives for the drastic changes in the automotive industry.

This is a consensus reached by more and more people in the industry, but it takes time for more people to accept it in the process of spreading to a wider range of people or the iteration of the technology itself.

New Trend 3: New Brand Iteration

Yuanqi Forest Soda Sparkling Water, Huaxizi Lipstick, Three Semi-Instant Coffee Powder, Wang Baobao Yogurt Oatmeal...

When did international brands such as Coca-Cola, Dior, and Starbucks no longer attract our attention, instead, new domestic products with ingenious designs and good product appearance and quality began to frequently grab our attention.

The establishment of these domestic brands is less than 5 years on average, but the growth momentum has been beyond the reach of the predecessors. They accurately insight into the needs of young consumers, using completely different products, marketing, and channel play to break into the market where traditional brands have long dominated and set up a camp in Anzhai, and soon established a world. What is the secret behind this?

First of all, the product is different. Unlike Coca-Colas consistentpackaging, Genki Forest Soda Sparkling Water is also a sugar-free beverage, but it has a small and refreshing Japanese-style packaging with 9 flavors, suitable for sharing in social circles and creating unique personal settings.

Secondly, the way of advertising is different. Coca-Cola once spent a year of profit-200,000 US dollars on CCTV advertising, but the marketing channels of beauty brands such as Perfect Diary and Huaxizi are placed on social platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Douyin Kuaishou, WeChat Official Account, etc. Relying on the KOC (Key Opinion Consumer) of the platform can create explosive products and spend a small amount of money to do big things.

Of course, the sales channels are also very different. The new brand is aimed at chain convenience stores and e-commerce platforms, which can better attract target users to purchase (15-35 years old, consumers who pay attention to food health and are more interested in experiencing new products).

Finally, the thinking level of entrepreneurs is different. If we have made a fortune through hard work before, then this year's entrepreneurs are using more intelligence to promote the brand. Tang Bunsen, who developed the popular games "Clash of Kings" and "Happy Farm", combined his experience on the Internet with unconventional products and marketing strategies, and finally broke into Coca-Cola's backyards and eroded the traditional brand self-conceptions. A stable market.

Does the rise of new brands just rely on eye-catching "marketing"? Not.

In essence, they have carried out new generational innovations from the cognitive level of products, marketing, channels, and even entrepreneurs, using a new set of gameplay, or brand new game rules, to advance by leaps and bounds, and find new blue ocean opportunities in a red sea.

New Trend 4: End of the Money Burning Era

Some people say that Liu Erhai of Joy Capital is the most "unlucky" person this year, because the two companies he invested deeply in, Ruixing Coffee and Eggshell Apartment, have "stormed" at the beginning and end of the year. They went from a successful listing to the last. One feather.

Luckin Coffee used large subsidies to invite people across the country to drink coffee for free, and it took only 18 months from its establishment to the listing of US stocks. The debut was the pinnacle. A detailed short report by the American short-selling agency Muddy Water forced Ruixing to expose "financial fraud" and finally received a delisting notice from the US SEC. In the face of the SEC's allegations, Ruixing chose to subscribe for a settlement of 180 million US dollars in fines.

In the long-term rental apartment track, the eggshell apartments used "rent loans" to collect high and low rents, quickly enclosing the country. Once the capital chain is strained, this dangerous model will fail. At the end of the year, a large number of tenants will be in a dangerous situation of having no houses to live in but carrying loans due to conflicts with the landlord. The local government will eventually need to mediate.

From the earliest group-buying battles of thousands of groups to the shared travel battles of Ofo and Mobike, Kuaidi, and Didi, the tried-and-tested model of "burning money for the market" has become the mindset of startup companies. In the fierce war, the comparison of business models and operations has given way to the rate of money burn.

Luckin Coffee's "thunderstorm" caused US regulators and investors to cast a "vote of no confidence" in China's concept stocks; the failure of Eggshell Apartments almost led to mass incidents.

The era of burning money for the market to determine winners and losers is over.

New Trend 5: Some innovations have nothing to do with technology

E-commerce "erodes" offline commerce even faster.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the total online retail sales have gradually increased from zero to 20% of the total social retail sales in the past 20 years.

In the first half of 2020, this figure has increased by 5% and is expected to become 10% by the end of the year. This year's time is equivalent to the past 10 years.

The epidemic has accelerated online, especially the "online" of offline commerce by community group buying. In the past year, community group buying, a business that integrates online and offline, is rapidly occupying every corner of Chinese business, even in rural suburbs.

If the impact of e-commerce on offline commerce is gradual, then community group-buying is intense. In addition to the superior efficiency of the business model of community group buying, it is more the capital ambition behind the platform.

Starting from the entry of major Internet giants in July 2020, subsidies for burning money have become the main theme for giants to seize the "new entrance to traffic". Subsequently, the offline commercial price system was disrupted, which in turn affected the "vegetable basket" related to people's livelihood. Community group-buying fully demonstrates the "unreasonable" business beliefs and codes of conduct that Internet giants have relied on in the past.

Then, cold water hit. On December 11, the Peoples Daily issued a statement saying that Internet giants should not "worry about the bundles of cabbage for ordinary people." On December 22, the State Administration of Market Supervision and the Ministry of Commerce met with Alibaba, Tencent, JD.com, Meituan, Pinduoduo, and Didi. "Nine must-have community group purchases."

The "Nine Nos" require Internet platform companies not to abuse their independent pricing power through such methods as low-price dumping, price collusion, price bidding, and price fraud. Do not abuse the power of independent pricing, do not use data advantages to "kill familiarity", etc.

The rapid expansion of classic Internet styles such as burning money subsidies and robbing people may be about to fail. This is not only a "restraint" on community group buying but also a "supervision" of other areas involved in Internet companies, as well as a timely reflection on business ethics.

Is community group buying a real technological innovation, or is it just another money-burning battle by Internet giants trying to concentrate traditional supply chains and users on their platforms?

Sometimes, some innovations may not be related to technology.

New Trend 6: International "Wall Breakers"

TikTok's situation in the United States this year is another crucial battle for Chinese companies to internationalize after Huawei. The key to this battle is that political conflict has spread to technology companies, and political methods have been used to undermine fair competition in business.

The dilemma facing Huawei and TikTok is that they are forced to be involved in deeper contradictions between different cultures and civilizations. In the future, this kind of contradiction is a difficult problem that all companies that start their businesses in China and have ambitions to go abroad may face.

Facing the predicament, Huaweis founder Ren Zhengfei stepped forward to accept extensive media interviews for public communication, and at the same time sought help from the U.S. law to prosecute the White House decree for unconstitutional; ByteDance also chose to use the business mechanism based on the law. "Completely transparent" to prevent "mixed water".

When political reasons transcend business rules, Chinese companies with the heart of overseas markets will need to face this intensifying new situation for a long time and find a new mechanism to deal with it. Huawei and TikTok are pioneers on this road, and can also be regarded as "wall breakers" in the internationalization of Chinese companies.

New Trend 7: New traffic "squeezes out" new e-commerce

Alibaba cannot make content, and Tencent cannot make e-commerce. This topic that has been ridiculed for many years in the Chinese Internet field may have to be reversed due to the emergence of live streaming.

The popular video account has been continuously launching new live broadcasts, shopping carts, and other functions since October this year, quickly pulling up a set of closed-loop e-commerce live broadcasts with goods. In December of this year, the Tmall homepage was revised and added a live broadcast portal, and the two major e-commerce platforms of Alibaba's Taobao and Tmall officially embraced live streaming to bring goods.

In the earliest Taobao live broadcasts, Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya became the top pacesetters in live broadcasts. This made the industry realize that not only did users feel undisturbed by reasonably exporting marketing content through live broadcasts, but they also had the urge to consume.

Since the beginning of this year, ByteDance has adjusted its organizational structure and established a first-level e-commerce business department, and has made many functional updates around the live broadcast of Douyin. Baidu acquired YY Fali Live, Meituan launched a local live broadcast, and so on. Live streaming e-commerce has become a standard in the industry and a new monetization channel for various platforms.

The emergence of live streaming has combined content with e-commerce, becoming a new traffic portal and "squeezing out" new content e-commerce. However, in addition to selling goods itself, content e-commerce may have greater value in creating consumer trends and achieving long-term brand growth.