Lei Feng Network: According to the author of this article Cheng Binghao (WeChat public number: Cheng Bingjun), founder of Kaixin.com.
On July 22nd, Kaiping Chang, founder and CEO of Kaixin.com, issued a letter of resignation and announced that he had withdrawn from Kaixin.com and said goodbye to Kaixin.com and Kaixin.com. After the once happy community of Kaixin.com made a game in transition, the final curve returned to A shares. At the end of the eight years, Cheng Bingyi wrote his own reflection. The article first published the personal WeChat public number of Cheng Bingshao and published it on Lei Feng Net (search "Lei Feng Net" public number concerned) after obtaining his authorization.
In 2008, I and several of my colleagues from Sina founded Kaixin.com (Beijing Happy People Information Technology Co., Ltd.). I am leaving now (2016) for a total of eight years. This is my summary and farewell to my eight years.
In fact, my ideological conclusions are still far from being completed. The summary of this text still lacks the tactics. However, I was enthusiastically concerned and concerned by many friends yesterday. The power consumption of the mobile phone was soon exhausted. In particular, media friends raised many questions. Now hastily rushed. Maybe in a few years, I will be able to do another happy net summary 2.0.
At the time of Kaixin's most glorious moment, it has been interpreted many times (including my own interpretation). I am not reading here from the perspective of brilliant.
In 2009, many people thought that Kaixin.com had the opportunity to become a super-internet company. But what made me paralyzed investors and employees was that Kaixin.com had started to decline in user activity since 2010 and eventually transformed into a mobile game company. It is no longer a platform company. In 2015, Happy Company's profits were tens of millions. This is the crystallization of happy people's cleverness and struggle, but it is far from the “best possible†seen in 2009. why?
Why is it far from the "best possible"?Let's talk about the reasons that I have seen, but this is certainly not the final answer to this question. This is just a complex copy that I personally made. Welcome to correct me.
First, find the reason from the person, my personal limitations:
Before I started my business, I did not fully manage a business line. I was mainly engaged in product and technology management. There was no practical experience in sales, marketing, investment and financing, corporate strategy, corporate governance, finance, and law. Some media commented that I was “not enough for businessâ€. .
There is no focus on the management of non-product technical personnel, such as sales, marketing, and business development. The management and technical personnel of these personnel are completely different. To me, there is a learning process.
I like to set myself too high a goal. There is no difficulty in creating difficulties.
Typical engineer perfectionist nature, for unfamiliar areas, the conditions are uncertain conservative things.
My natural emotional intelligence is very low, and I don't like cooperation. I prefer to complete one thing with complete control. I don't like to negotiate or participate in various meetings. Maybe I am a mild “social phobia†sufferer.
Next down is my thinking about business.
Second, "fake happy network" defeated a really happy network?
of course not. Although we have suffered great losses and tens of millions of users who should have belonged to us have been hijacked away, the handling of this incident highlights the immaturity of business consciousness that I had when I first started the company. If this matter can be avoided, we should Having more resources and time will greatly help the company's operations. Despite this, our mainstream user base still uses the real happy network. In 2011, we finally ushered in the court's final verdict.
Third, microblogging, WeChat competition
Was Weibo and Wechat defeated Kaixin.com? My answer: No. The user groups of Weibo and WeChat are very similar to our user base and have a great influence on us. However, the decline in our user activity is caused by the product's own characteristics and life cycle. The appearance of Weibo and WeChat has accelerated this process, but this is not the root cause.
Fourth, open platform
Some friends think that Kaixin.com's opening of the open platform is relatively late and open enough, and that this is the main reason for Kaixin.com's active users to decline. My opinion: The criticism is very correct, but I do not think this is the root cause. In the era of Internet, we should be open to doing business, and each of us must also be open-minded. If Kaixin.com has a good open platform, there will be no doubt that Kaixin.com will be of great help. However, the open platform can only help the retention of users. I think there are two most important reasons:
1, steal food parking, there are life cycles.
Social games, unlike traditional games, look very different. The core of fun is "social," and it may be more appropriate to call "social games." Its users are young and old, because they are completely innovative when they are born out of thin air, and users get a brand new experience at first. The fun is very strong, sticky and extremely fast, but it will eventually have a life cycle.
Most importantly, this kind of social game is not like traditional games. Traditional games can constantly renew genres and new ways of play and keep on doing so. The fun of social games lies in a new form of interaction between people and people. Fun - good joke, this kind of joke has undergone several improvements and innovations - from friends buying and selling to parking spaces to stealing food, people are exhausted by this joke of laughter. Users are not losing interest in a social game and are losing interest in all social games. After 2011, there are basically no pure social games on the market, and there are only traditional games plus social elements.
This is the first "Gate of Life" of Kaixin.com. Many people mentioned before that the solution given by everyone is, "You should concentrate on socializing." This is the lifeblood of the next product. I didn't listen to anyone else. It was my own analysis, right or wrong, and my own taste.
2. Social networking of acquaintances is not just needed, and cannot be the biggest pillar supporting a product.
Arguments, in addition to our own experience of running all the way, but also including the objective conditions of the Chinese market, in fact, in addition to us, there are many companies committed to "acquaintance social", but now are basically not mainstream products.
I know you have to say, "WeChat." The explanation is that the core stickiness of WeChat is "communication." Communication is undoubtedly the most rigid just needed. WeChat is under the support of communication, which is just needed, and is affiliated with a circle of friends. Maybe the user It takes a lot of time in the circle of friends, but the circle of friends is not the core stickiness.
Weibo? Weibo is not an "acquaintance socializing." Perhaps there are acquaintances on top of each other, but that is not the mainstream. Momo? Momo is certainly not an acquaintance. The names are written.
Finally, you have to say "facebook". I'm sorry, I don't live in the United States. I don't have enough right to say about American social products. However, the history of the Internet development between China and the United States has shown that the Internet products of the two countries are not one. A corresponding relationship, on this point, we have a lot of experience and lessons, try one example, the farm game in the Chinese market, social factors reflected in the "stealing vegetables", which is also an important core fun, but the United States facebook above the most fired farm In games, socialization is embodied in "help and sharing". Later we introduced a series of social games to reflect this kind of "help and sharing." The popularity of users is far from "buying friends as slaves," "stickers," and "stealing vegetables." ".
In more detail, we understand the process of "acquaintance socializing". In fact, when Kaixin.com was just released, it was an acquaintance social networking site. We wanted to be a “fun†site from the very beginning, and there were some fun little apps but no social games. I have found many colleagues from Sina.com. Everyone began to enjoy this kind of experience. Sina’s new and old colleagues reunited with Kaixin. Some even “said Cheng Bingya really strange that he resigned from Sina and went out to Sina. "Intranet," but after some time, activity has begun to decline, and it feels like "everyone hasn't gotten to talk". In various explorations, we noticed that we have developed some interesting little applications, such as "moving TA." "Friends impression" and so on, users are relatively more like. We have been making more and more of this “fun†thinking until “friends buy and sellâ€. This should be China's first social game. Users immediately flock to it. We know that “this is right†and we are fully committed to this kind of development. Fun interactive social games, then the best performance of the "vehicle parking space", "steak food", but in fact we do more than just a few of these.
In the year of stealing food in 2009, we also worried about the life cycle of social games. Therefore, we have a new social game with one hand and the other wants to guide users to socialize. Although many users come for stealing food, many core users in Beijing and Shanghai, in particular, have obvious social behavior. The non-gaming application “posting†we developed has also succeeded in attracting many users who originally only used to steal food.
However, with the decline in the activity of games such as stealing food, the social activity of users has also declined.
My experience is that the main purpose of the user's happy network is to steal food. When we come up, because we push social information (photos, diaries, etc.) in the feed stream, the user is also attracted by the friend's photo diary to participate in the review.
However, when users do not want to steal food, the number of acquaintance friends of a person is limited, and the amount of content and interaction generated is also decreasing. At that time, computers were mainly used to access the Internet. Users began to lack the motivation to open Kaixin.com frequently to check whether there were new friends. The factors that exacerbate this situation are: the old friends' surprises that have just been seen on the Internet have also passed. Friends who do not work and live together lack long-lasting topics. The existence of colleagues and supervisors has an invisible limit.
This may be another happy life portal.
In summary, if the above analysis is established, then although Kaixin.com has been burning fire in 2008-2009, it is red and purple, but in fact there is a huge crisis on the product, and Weibo has already been grabbing our users. It was just beginning. In the mobile Internet, users will all have to change to mobile devices in the next few years. The websites that he uses on PCs do not necessarily continue to the mobile phones. Therefore, the time for us is not much. We must have more innovations, and we must Fast, can't stay for a moment.
Fifth, the error of the winner
But this is now a conclusion from God's perspective. When we crisscrossed various things, we didn't see it so clearly. And we made the mistakes of "successists." These mistakes, in fact, I often criticize others before starting my own business. , but it's their turn, no improvement at all.
The wrong mentality of the winner: God's choice.
As successful people, we are always willing to believe that we will succeed and that our friends will fail. We do not want to truly believe that our own success is actually extremely fragile and may fail at any time. However, Nokia has only been able to sell for less than 5 years from the moment of prosperity. The market, the government, and ourselves are at all times subject to changes that we cannot predict at all.
To put it plainly, when we are in a good situation, we are filled with pride and when the situation is bad, we quickly turn into crazy emotions.
The wrong way for winners: path dependence.
Success has had numerous accidental factors, but we did not realize this year. We began to summarize and summed up a lot of brilliant theories for ourselves. Then we said that we will continue to do so in the future and expand our efforts.
"The students who learn me are like me who died." Not to mention learning from yourself.
One thing is right, it should be forgotten to look forward. Looking back, it is no longer true.
The logic of the mistakes of the winner: Because I am... So do... we're going to...
This seems to be as perfect as Aristotle's syllogism.
We have done a lot of new products, and they are not separated from “socialâ€, and many are even “acquaintance socialâ€.
In fact, in the era of this drastic change, every 2-3 years, a small change, every 3-5 years of infrastructure (infrastructure) has changed, before their own success or not, what path did they follow, And the one-and-a-half area that he laid down was not important compared to the outside world.
The wrong attitude of the winner: Be sure to surpass yourself.
A company that has fallen from its peak has a huge burden. Past successes may turn into negative assets. On the one hand, there is a decline in user activity on a daily basis. Every day, there is frustration and morale is low. On the other hand, it is easy to have the mentality of “you see me take another big move†and lose your sense of peace.
Therefore, it is very difficult for a company that has once succeeded in going downhill to take off again. For a time, one of our friends and merchants often spread "the company that never got up and went down again and got up again. So, Kaixin.com is sure to be finished." It makes sense.
Opportunity and realityNow, if we look back on God's perspective and look at the company of Happy People after 2010, what should we do? What opportunities could we have seized?
1. Make use of the popular network of acquaintances and acquaintances to communicate. It is best to cooperate with Microsoft to control MSN and gain the right to independently develop and operate MSN. - Of course it is very difficult to reach such cooperation with Microsoft.
The actual situation: It seems that there has been contact with MSN and it is not clear. IM was developed in 2010, because the opponent is very powerful (you know), so the product owner is very demanding and has not completed. After discovering Kik, we immediately launched our similar product "Fly Bean." ending? Of course, there is a huge demand for products, but it is WeChat that wins.
2. Extend the acquaintance social circle of Kaixin.com and develop similar Weibo functions. Or, integrated with Weibo early on.
The actual situation: We saw the value of Twitter very early, but we also saw the risk of this model, attributed to the "successist mentality", we did not want to take the risk at the beginning.
When we saw Sina Weibo doing it and posing a threat to us, we immediately did a Weibo in 10 years, but the release just went offline for some external reasons.
We talked about integration in the early days of Sina Weibo, but the mentality of our team still thinks "I can", so it is not reached.
3, to do "friends" or "interested in social", such as: know the model, in Kaixin network, or independent products, use Kaixin's popularity training.
The actual situation: If you have done a product, you are interested in socializing and failing. Looking back now is a matter of implementation.
4. Make great efforts to invest in the mobile internet to learn the existing successful models of the market, using the existing traffic and popularity of Kaixin.com.
Actual situation: Only 12 years have started to make mobile Internet new products that are not related to Kaixin.com, and it is mainly based on social concepts to create innovative products. Each product, from the point of view of product realization, has high levels, but all failed, and it may still fail in positioning and concepts. The risk of innovation is extremely high, and the social concept does not have to stick to it.
5, do web game development. On the basis of the social game team, the teams were divided into web game businesses and independent companies were set up to make the teams more flexible and motivated. They started backing on Kaixin.com and gradually developed independently.
Actual situation: Did not do it.
6, to expand overseas markets. Whether it is a happy network platform, social games, or web games, it is suitable for expanding overseas markets. An independent company should also be established to operate.
Actual situation: For a while, the progress is not good, just as other projects are short of people...
7, as soon as possible, this is a double-edged sword, but after the listing, you can get more resources to expand.
The actual situation: At the beginning, it was thought that “the company is not in a hurry to go public, and it said that it is listed on the market all the time. Low, ah, it can be listed rather than being listed, so we’re definitely not in a hurry.†Later, the company is ready to go public. In the course of the process, the user's activity declined, and the brokers recommended that the suspension be suspended.
8, to do a real "happy farm", with the ability to wire the company's cooperation.
Actual situation: Did not do it. At that time, I was thinking about "familiarity, not doing," "concentration," and doing a bad job of harming the brand. This matter was not related to the decline in the activity of our users....
Many of the above problems are caused by popular concepts. Dogmatism kills people and believes that books are worse than books. In the final analysis, they still blame themselves for their inexperience. They are even less courageous to face their own hearts to obtain answers and seek security from the outside world. unsafe.
We had countless opportunities for much better results, but I didn't. I was really happy with my colleagues and I was an investor.
What did we do from 2010 to 2011?One hand, continue to do social games, hoping that the new games will make greater achievements. The games that are doing better are: super tycoons, happy restaurants, happy estates, happy cities, and happy life... but compared with stealing foods. Not the same language.
The other hand, do innovative applications and platforms. In addition to the above mentioned, there are:
Group buy , the company that came over at that time, who did not do group buy, we did for 3 months, saw the start of burning money, I stopped.
O2O application , post-development stop.
I want to develop a vertical application based on Kaixin.com, and have done a happy baby and a pair of children (both male and female friends) and failed.
Collections , imitating Pinterest's picture collection social.
Beautiful carved , imitating Path's private social.
The above two products are all mimicking the latest emerging social products in the United States. Not only have we failed, other imitators have not been successful. Of course, two of the Pinterest interfaces have been successful, but they have all done Chinese innovation. Their skin is Pinterest but not inside. However, we simply imitated rough and crude, which shows that we were already in a hurry at the time. These two products are things that happened after the second half of 11 years.
Until the end of 11th, we felt that the mobile game market would get up. Although there were still a lot of voices in the industry who believed that mobile games did not make money, we felt that this might be the next "Big Thing." Although I had never played online before, I didn’t really play online games, but I was arrogant and felt that my ability to learn was super, and when I was just working on “digging gold†and “Tetrisâ€, I I also like to play. So I think it's okay, I can quickly design a good game.
At the same time, at this time, our mentality has reached the bottom, and the proletarians have lost only their chains. The advantage is that we get rid of the mistaken attitudes and methods of those who succeeded. From scratch, I gradually transferred the company’s major forces to mobile games. Bet!
However, I encountered new problems. After half a year, I can only admit that I cannot love online games. I cannot enjoy the joy of parallel worlds as many people do , and I cannot naturally become a good game designer.
In this case, 12 years and 13 years were very difficult for me. Until the second half of 13 years, I finally saw the dawn of money. We finally took a hand in overseas markets and occupied a place. In 2015, the game got tens of millions of profits, and I can finally withdraw from the professional game player to control the company. Why is there such a reversal? I can only say that this is a miracle. It is the struggle and luck of our team. Believe it or not, I believe it anyway.
teamI would like to say more about the team . We originally had a good team. When the company was growing rapidly, the team was very positive. However, in the process of the decline of Kaixin.com, it revealed that I existed in team building. problem. There is a conclusion in system theory: the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. But in fact, the excellent team should be much larger than the sum of individual capabilities. Before me, I paid too much attention to my personal ability, neglected the team factor, and ignored the impact of the platform on individual ability.
Therefore, many colleagues, who are full of expectations, should have used their intelligence and wisdom in Kaixin.com and finally disappointed. Plus, we moved from the initial social networking business to the mobile game business. Many old colleagues did not want to engage in new business, and they all left. It can only be at this moment, say again, sorry.
In 2008 and 2009, Kaixin.com fluttered its wings. In 10 and 11 years, it asked for suicide. In 12 and 13 years it surrendered to death, and in 14 and 15 years it finally landed.
I have written here and recalled that for many of these years, I stood on a cliff as if I were standing alone. There was no way out from above and below. I can only meditate on the famous statement that Mr. Jiang Baili wrote for another eight-year struggle. Worth mentioning is to not speak with him!"
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