Xie Wen: The Prophecy Of KK, Founder Of Wired.

Have the opportunity to work with a few friends with the most famous magazine in the Internet industry. WIRED Founder and editor in chief Kevin Kelly (industry insider nickname KK) chatted all afternoon. suggest Internet industry in China The current situation and future, can not help but write down a few words to share with friends.

KK has written in the magazine and published articles in various famous newspapers and periodicals, and also wrote a lot of works that have great influence on the cadres in the network industry, the IT industry and the scientific and technological circles. His famous name "runaway" twenty years ago is still selling well, and the Chinese version has just been published. The latest book, "what does technology want?" has just appeared. His views on the impact of technological progress on society, the self evolution and internal contradictions of complex systems, especially on the development and orientation of the Internet industry, are deeply valued by people in the industry, and have aroused heated debates and refutation from time to time. Before KK, the vitality of the network lies in the idea of centralization. The existing WEB is dead, and the viewpoint of Internet immortality is a very forward-looking and controversial example.

I have read most of KK's works and articles, but my interest is more focused on his views on the development and trend of the Internet industry. Here are some of my questions about the Internet industry and KK's prophetic answer:

With regard to the growth of new media and the demise of traditional media, 90% of American newspapers will die out in the ----5 years. A small part can only be used as an online version, leaving more skeletons intact. Very few newspapers with a long history and national and even worldwide influences, such as the New York Times and the Wall Street journal, may still be published in two forms, paper and Internet, but will be dominated by the Internet version. More than 50% of American magazines will die. In fact, compared with the peak period of magazine publishing, 25% of magazines have died. He created the "connect" magazine, IPAD version than the Internet version of making money, the network version than the print version of making money, the secret is not what the content is different, the IPAD version of the advertising form is more cool and more fashionable. However, the cost of the success of the "connecting line" is that other similar magazines have completely left the arena. The broadcasting industry is dead. In addition to a few occasions (such as driving) and the market, there is no market value as a whole. The television industry still has strong vitality. Surveys show that for the whole society, people watch TV for two times of Internet time. However, television has been redefined and has more implications for video services. The market will become a world of three points. Traditional TV stations will serve the public, the cable channels will serve the public and the minority, and the network video will be personalized and personalized. Technically speaking, the television industry will be thoroughly digitalized and Internet based, and can be disseminated according to Internet technology standards and methods.

About the next big innovation in the Internet industry (BIG THING) -- if we take YAHOO, Google and FACEBOOK as the standard of three different historical periods, we will not see the next BIG THING in 5 years. The development space of YAHOO mode has come to an end, Google's energy is far from being played, and the WEB2.0 mode established by FACEBOOK is just beginning, so the whole industry has not yet had the conditions and power needed for the next big innovation. The way to judge innovation by KK is to divide innovation into four levels: function (FEATURE), product, company and platform. Functional level innovation, such as P2P and RSS, is more specific technological progress with limited impact. Product level innovation, such as blog and C2C, is more complete than functional innovation and stronger comprehensive ability, but it is only a progress in the vertical field, and does not affect the overall situation of the network industry. Corporate innovation, such as apple, relies more on individual talents. When it is good, it is irresistible. Only platform level innovation can affect the overall strength and change the depth of everything, and create new market space and long-term vitality. In KK's view, TWITTER is just a product level innovation, and is a subsystem of WEB2.0 platform represented by FACEBOOK. Apple is just a corporate innovation, mainly relying on the genius of STEVE JOBS. As for GROUPON, the so-called group buying service, KK wants to say that it is a functional innovation at most.

With regard to the next profit point of Internet services, OWNERSHIP is no longer a guarantee of profitability, and ACCESSIBILITY is the guarantee for the profitability of the Internet companies. KK takes the example of network music service to illustrate his point. Nowadays, the very low cost of personal customization has tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of pieces of music ownership is no longer difficult, it is difficult to know where they want to listen to music works. Similarly, it is not difficult for an online music service company to have numerous musical works. It is difficult to introduce different works to different users who like them. So, who can find efficient, cheap, accurate, intelligent way to mass products and massive potential users one-to-one correspondence, and promote, who may become the future profit big household. After all, it's very annoying to have everything but don't know what you like, which makes it meaningless. On the contrary, without everything, they can always get things that they like, even if they do not have enough money. They can not know that they will like them, but they get the things they should like by some mechanism. This is the real possession.

KK is very polite to say that his prediction may not be accurate, but judging from the historical point of view, he is quite accurate in judging the trend and trend of the industry. I generally agree with his prediction because it is almost the same as my observation. However, the prediction of KK is based on the observation and thinking of the US Internet industry. It may not be able to copy the prediction of the development of China's Internet industry, because China has China's national conditions, Chinese characteristics and China's troubles. {page_break}

A year ago, I made a prediction in this magazine about China's Internet in the coming year. Looking back now, it's not unreasonable. This year, the total income of the Internet industry is more than one hundred billion yuan, and the performance of the major companies in the industry has shown a good performance. It is difficult to distinguish between genuine and fake businesses, and the network companies that are good or bad are constantly landing on GEM and NASDAQ. Micro-blog has become a rare shot in the Internet industry. However, there are no changes in the fundamentals of the network industry, such as lack of innovation, space tightening, deterioration of competition, national retreat, capital game and so on, forming the main theme of the industry. There are not many good things to count. In early, Google search was forced to withdraw. Since then, several services representing the world's Internet direction (such as FACEBOOK, TWITTER) have been insulated from China's four hundred million Internet users. Then NetEase's World of Warcraft game was allowed to operate after a 18 month review. All kinds of micro-blog services were formally launched on the line for half a year to a year later, and suddenly they were ordered to take the hat of trial operation. The main network companies staged a series of continuous and uninhibited practices, which brought the competition to the lowest level in history. Finally, at the end of the year, the 3Q war broke out in the whole country. The leading Tencent in the industry was dragged into the most ruthless and vicious competition game. Worse than that, some big Internet companies are eager to innovate, do not follow the trend of the world network industry, move towards platform and open, but are enthusiastic about the expansion of closed industry. The result of homogenization attracted the call of antitrust. This kind of voice is opposed to some monopolistic monopolistic technology, and the use of vested interest groups with fair competition and incompetence has exerting a very real threat to the Internet industry: a network industry that takes private enterprises as the mainstream and the industry has been formed for more than a decade will probably become the primary object of China's anti-monopoly. Compared with the real monopolistic enterprises that have been more and more powerful and increasingly dominant in China for decades, those more successful private Internet companies will be more and more dangerous.

In the coming year, several major variables will determine the future of China's network industry. First of all, the network industry is facing the slowdown in the growth of the existing mature business mode, the slow down of new Internet users, and the great pressure on the network demographic dividend. Next year's strategic choice of network companies will be the first variable. The report of Listed Companies in the first three quarters of this year shows that the growth rate of online advertising is basically the same as that of last year, but the increase in Baidu is only one. The growth rate of online game revenue has slowed down obviously. The scale of e-commerce turnover has increased significantly, but there has been little increase in profits. How to find a new growth point of the network industry has become a problem that every network company must answer. The bad news is that some big companies will expand horizontally across the industry. This may increase the performance of a few companies, but at the expense of the whole industry, it will be difficult for small and medium-sized companies to survive. The strategy is to invest resources in the wireless Internet, hoping to find new opportunities in the 3G era. But now we can see that wireless Internet will not become the Savior of Internet companies at least next year. If I take into account the historical experience and lessons, I prefer the wireless Internet to the strategic development direction of the network industry, and it can only be a tactical supplement. The best policy is to seek innovation and change and innovate for development. Recently, Sina and Tencent have announced publicly that they will move towards platform and openness. At least on the strategic level, this is a welcome sign. Secondly, the environment for the development of the network industry will continue to deteriorate or stabilize and improve. It will be the second variable for predicting the development of the network industry next year. In this regard, I take a more cautious pessimistic attitude. Next year, there will be a series of monopolistic network state-owned enterprises listed in China. These companies and the forces behind them face the pressure of post market performance, and it is very likely to habitually squeeze and restrict the development and operation of private Internet companies. Of course, we can not completely exclude the possibility of these listed companies going to market and fair competition. Finally, whether the mainstream companies in the Internet industry can learn from the serious consequences of this year's vicious competition is third variables. If we do not draw lessons from it, some companies will turn over to the authorities and make a black hole and continue to play a vicious competition. The prospect of the whole industry will not be wonderful. It is not impossible for Mantis to catch cicada and the tragedy of the future. If we draw lessons from it and set the rules and regulations for competition in the industry, we will bring the whole industry back to the track of healthy competition and restore the healthy state of the industry to a certain extent.

With all these considerations, I am cautiously optimistic about the development and performance of the network industry next year. The growth rate of the whole industry will be roughly the same as this year, at the annual growth rate of 30% to 40%. The total industrial revenue can reach 1300-1400 billion scale. In terms of innovation, we may be able to see some tactical level actions, such as partial opening, one-way opening and surface platform efforts. As for the comprehensive platform, opening up and moving towards the WEB2.0 era in a systematic and comprehensive way, the whole industry will be able to build a new industrial chain and industrial division of labor. I am afraid it will not be seen in one or two years.