Wei Swing: "Interface" debut, the original is not tyrants!

Wen/Wei

The surging appearance of the Shanghai newspaper Group has aroused a strong concern at least in the media circles. This month, I have the exact news that another project "interface" should be on the 22nd on the online test. This once in the lake of the project, is not invested in hundreds of millions of dollars, is not to do the east of Bloomberg, is not 1000 dollars to buy an external manuscript, is not the rich and poor money, this article through a number of information channels for the summary, one for you to reveal.

Capital, equity, model

interface to the account of 100 million yuan, not hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars, investment is not small, but also not so rich and poor how much money. The interface of the original hundreds of millions of-dollar rumor is full of a tangle of mentality: on the one hand, hundreds of millions of dollars is really eye-catching, and will be in the negotiation of investment has a certain convenience, but on the other hand, the partners are also good job seekers, all Shiri, you do not bad money natural lion. A friend in the interface to market promotion is not without the pain: everyone thought I do not bad money, an opening is millions of cooperation costs. Tyrants is not so good.

The interface in addition to more than 50% in the absolute holding position of the Shanghai Newspaper Group, there are two financial shareholders are Guotai and Haitong Securities, a PE shareholder Lenovo Hong Yi, two Internet shareholders millet, 360, and the drow media. The process of gaining investment is swift among some shareholders, but in some shareholders it is rather lengthy. During the period, there are some companies perfunctory 5 minutes to send away, this is often staged in rivers and lakes, in the interface, is no exception.

For the management team, it is now certain that they must rely on performance to get the board's endorsement in order to be rewarded, which is widely used in the current venture capital market.

The interface was launched 7 months ago (that is, February 2014), after several rounds of recruitment, there are now 130 people, of which there are only 30 journalists in the real sense to do the writing (and, of course, many editors). It is said to recruit another 30 to 40 people, but it is hard for a good financial journalist to recruit. This is the current media circle of truth, there are a lot of senior financial journalists have to change careers, including the top two financial media: Finance and Finance.

Interface has begun to launch two rounds of financing, allegedly including Sequoia, Ding Hui, such as no less than 5 well-known investment companies expressed their intention.

New production of content

A clear message is that, on the initial online interface site, it is more like a "boutique financial site", rather than "financial products." Some of the financial planning I learned a few months ago is not too much in this version, but it will be on a platform called Moore's finance in Phase two, which is expected to come online in December. It is divided into two phases because the investment in the interface does not allow them to pull the line so long. Moreover, financial products is a more difficult to operate than financial media business, the main interface team background is mostly financial media origin, rather than financial company origin, which determines the early interface or focus on "finance" above.

I have seen the Web site style of the interface from the message channel, a pan-financial web site with some portal architectures that will make short reports on some of the most popular events in the world, such as entertainment, with a major interest in corporate reporting. The daily draft volume is roughly the size of a first financial weekly. As the interface team-including he, Warwick-many are the founder of a financial weekly, operating routines are not unfamiliar, following a wealth style is easy to understand, but the manuscript is still very large. The 30 journalists ' team, I am afraid, is difficult to meet this requirement. Although the current interface has prepared draft, but after the line, I am afraid that a two weeks will be used up, the follow-up of the continuous quality and quantity of the draft, remains a huge challenge. Thus, the path of a commercial news website that could mobilize all the people involved was drawn out. From the interface of some of the promotional materials can be seen, they want to participate in the way the user to drive the production of manuscripts.

The most interesting part of the interface is its right-hand module, which deploys three buttons: The topic, trailer, contributor--that is, the people involved.

The author of this module is relatively simple, in fact, after the examination of the selection of the external manuscript authors. The interface does have 1000 dollars to buy an external draft plan, but not any manuscript can be used to access the interface, and the price is also the highest purchase prices (only the first page of the recommended from the media articles to enjoy this price), rather than the standard price. In addition to the media, they want to hit other financial journalists to write for them through high returns.

Trailer, which is what the next phase of the interface will launch a blockbuster financial report. In the form of a trailer, what I see is a summary of something similar to what the subject of upcoming blockbuster reports is. I do not rule out the possibility of using video in the future, because I did hear the message of the ROM thinking and the interface: Using the mind of Luo to predict. Trailer after the release, will be paid to collect news clues, to add to the fact that has entered into the article in the size of semi-finished products. This model is estimated to be to stir up the company's public relations can not sleep-this trick is tough enough.

The theme meeting, this approach is very novel, the interface plan to launch several companies daily chat rooms. Each chat room has an editor at the interface. Chat room has a topic (for example, * * * Company seminar), feel that they are familiar with the company or have experience in the industry, you can enter the chat room for discussion. Chat rooms have a certain number of restrictions, so the presiding editor will occasionally kick out some basic users to make a quota. When the editors find that some users have a deep understanding of the company, they will invite TA into a higher level of private chat room for information communication. Every night, the editors will rearrange the information to make sure that the story is quickly rolled out. This report may be a report signed by the user, and the user can choose whether or not to sign it. From the interface Web page I saw, it was planned to have five or six chat rooms opened every day. And in the future, it is possible that the chat room moderator is not the interface of the full-time staff, but audited external authors.

Topics will, trailers, contributors, have a certain business chain relationship. After the discussion of the topic, it is possible to become a notice in the trailer. If the topic is hosted by an external author, the final article will appear in the contributor's module. This kind of content production mode has a certain crowdsourcing and extended nature, in the domestic still is novel, but I personally feel, the difficulty is actually very big. It is difficult, because the production process is in a state of openness, how to deal with peer competition, the company's public relations department interference (or interference into coordination), are required to actually verify. Even hosting an online chat and making it work is no easy job.

But this is really a way to break the traditional news production process, if the success will change the past mode of journalism, or even directly bypass all public relations departments, bringing together a large number of corporate secrets. The interface hopes to stimulate user participation through high rewards and signature achievement.

More lines of business

In addition to these three buttons, the interface has some other business. Including urgent employment, video, feature articles, beauty, fun and so on. The interface is doing this kind of innovation and on the line to roll out a lot of business, mainly from a pure news site fear-such a model in the capital market is not optimistic. The first phase of the interface should be the desire to assemble the city's white-collar workers through good content, sticking them on the platform through user participation and other business.

Urgent, the focus is "big company New line of business"-for example, a company will launch a new product, so they want to recruit the appropriate market talent. The interface is intended to allow large companies to post real-world recruitment requirements to the interface's Web site, allowing them to detail the new business plan under the job information.

Video, roughly three a day, each time in 1-2 minutes, video content is the integration of global financial information. That is to intercept the financial videos of the world's major television stations and then edit them.

feature, its mode of production is somewhat similar to the American narrative (http://www.narrativemagazine.com/), a week, to "phenomenon" as the angle rather than the "company." The interface also wants to get some international awards to increase brand influence, sources said. The feature is currently operated by a team of interfaces and may be attempted in the future by a certain crowdsourcing approach.

The creature, which specializes in E-commerce guides for high-end male users, is categorized by demand (such as business partner gift-giving needs, such as for parents, partners, children, etc.) rather than by product. Now on the page can see that there is a vertical site with the cooperation.

These businesses, the future existence of a joint venture in the form of independent, in other words, the interface itself is incubating these lines of business.

Our Partners

interface to purchase some content, such as Bloomberg's client, in the third party content procurement, the interface is about 60.7 million dollars in size.

Interface currently with the following companies to reach a partnership:

Baidu, 360, millet are providing flow of partners: drainage. Baidu has reached a collaboration with the interface, Baidu News in the presence of an exclusive interface website. The interface also wants their news to appear in the 360 window.

In addition, the audience also provides about 10 million of the value of advertising display.

From this chain of business lines and partners, the interface is a structure in which partners import traffic, the interface operates these flows through the provision of content and interactive services, and is rammed into active users and then transformed into commercial value through other businesses.

The difficulty of the interface

The market environment facing the interface is still quite grim.

Initial line of business may be too open, the market is expected to be too high, hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars, Oriental Bloomberg. The ideal is beautiful, but the reality is extremely bony.

Team building has yet to be significantly strengthened. Of the 130-person team, most of them come from traditional media, and there are few people from internet companies. Technical personnel accounted for the paces people, limited in size. The team is still waiting for experienced senior staff to join, but the market for such talent is scarce, and the interface can provide the salary is not very tempting.

Interface is also the main PC side, it is said that the app will be online at the end of October. Currently mobile end only interface and Moore finance two public accounts as test water. The interactive news community that the interface expects, how to spread out in the mobile end, no one has the answer.

Product form, there are still strong characteristics of the portal, focusing on "pan-finance", these are not anything too new things. There is a breakthrough in content production mode, but it still needs empirical polishing.

Urgent employment, such as these lines of business, the flow requirements are very high, although the interface was not on the line has been and several traffic giants to reach a cooperation, but the flow of the importer can continue to provide the interface flow import, remains to be seen. The biggest variable comes from 360, even if 360 of the shareholders will continue to help the interface, but can be as high as the interface expectations-through high-quality content to impress Zhou