Douban.com revision brewing media transformation

Sina Technology News January 12 Morning News, Sina Technology was exclusively informed that Douban network information browsing, discovery and sharing platform 9 (9.douban.com) will be officially launched this morning. Some people believe that the recent frequent revision of Douban is an important signal for the transformation of the website to media.

Douban is one of the industry-renowned Web websites, but its executives have never been clear about its positioning. Although the concept of social network (SNS) is very popular nowadays, Yang Bo, founder of Douban, does not want to regard Douban as an SNS website.

In last December, Douban made a minor revision to the home page. This 9-point revision was the second revision of the website in the last month. Douban was launched in January 2007 at, aiming to help every user quickly and effectively discover the most interesting information in the complicated and expanding blog content.

After Douban "square" was launched in August 2008, it had been "living" on the square page at, causing dissatisfaction among some users. At today, I will go back to the first-level navigation bar and cancel the previous one and two sets of names and change them to four categories: culture, life, technology, and interest, on the home page, five articles will be selected from each of the four categories, and 20 articles will be displayed in a total, leading to the emergence of media attributes. The biggest change is that a "my subscription" is added at the top right of the page, which is actually an online RSS reader. In addition, the nine-point LOGO discards the usual green color of Douban, and adopts the dark blue, the whole page becomes a calm style.

Some Douban people told Sina technology that its media attributes are becoming increasingly prominent in the new after the revision, which can be seen as a signal of the transformation from Douban to media. Yang Bo is not sure about this. He said, "the positioning of Douban is not important. What is important is that the content we provide is useful to users, each of our revisions is enough for users to optimize their user experience."

It is also known that the same city of Douban is also brewing a new version, the new city is expected to be launched in the future. After the revision, the local homepage will be more informative, and the browsing and searching methods will be more diversified and convenient.

Prior to this, Yang Bo, founder of douban.com, revealed in a line with Sina Technology that the website is expected to be profitable in 2009. He also said that the impact of the financial storm on Douban is not big, and the company has no plans to lay off employees.