Forgotten "living fossil": Survival in the decline of BBS

　BBS, disappear the rivers and lakes?

dinosaurs can't keep up with the bees ' footsteps.

If the media and industry are to be judged by the less-than-2012 IT companies, it is estimated that few people will think of the site, such as mop-not they live very well, but in micro-Bo and micro-letter capture the eye of today, the traditional BBS community really quickly become "forgotten corner."

This is the "vote with the foot", so that the BBS community began to feel a kind of frond loneliness. Lively is micro-blog and micro-letter, although Mr. Chao has begun to do this this year to improve his ability to become a microblog, at least Weibo has more than 400 million registered users, and the BBS community, which has been suppressed by Weibo, cannot hope to have such an order of magnitude of users.

Tianya, which was launched in 1999, is heading into its 14th year, but now Tianya's registered users are only more than 76 million, while online numbers remain at around 1 million – the most mature and active community in the country today. By contrast, Sina Weibo, which was online in 2009 and has now begun to be seen as more than 400 million registered users.

June 2012, the world in the Alexa rankings are still in the domestic site 120, and December 2012 is not past the time, it has fallen to 138 places. To know in the microblog is still in the "probationary period" of 2010, Tianya ranking is still within 100 digits.

"Reversal" appears in these three years, when SNS "Spring Breeze" blows into China, the stage has become the micro-Bo and micro-letter world, to the end of the BBS community as the representative of the Web site in the face of user growth slowed even to stagnation, its flow is also declining, The end result is that everyone is gradually reduced to the domestic internet two or three stream players, many community sites can only rely on the entry of online games to live.

At home, from a certain point of view, the Internet economy by many investors and business management to understand the attention and exposure of the economy, in this era of information fragmentation, the BBS community, this group of bulky dinosaurs, naturally do not keep up with the bees such as Weibo. A phenomenon that we all can relate to is that after 2011 years, almost all topics, hot spots and influence events are generated and disseminated from micro-blogs, and community-type websites are becoming more and more attention-less, becoming a bystander and follower. In May last year, the mop, which had a strong point of entertainment and gossip, planned to move from Beijing to Nanning, even because of its operating costs. The establishment of the two years before the end of the Earth, has worked with the Tianya to create countless UGC (user-created) content of the community, now the flow ranking also fell early 100.

With the decline of their influence, the advertising business that the community relies on for a living will inevitably decline. Although the end of the Earth, the mop has more than 10 years of history, but until now has not built a clear enough strong revenue model. Tianya president ' Xing since 2006 to explore the community's business model, even when the Web 2.0 era blog began to do its way, he is still optimistic about the Community products, think there will be a burst of growth. At the end of 2009, when the Tianya brewing 3 years before the launch of the first set of independent marketing system Adtop and enterprise space products, he also said: "Tianya future advertising prospects, billion is possible." If we cover a larger user base, hundreds of billions of dollars will not be enough. ”

And now the situation is, the horizon in that blind optimism proposed listing plan, is already in the mirror flower water in the month.

Even in the relatively closed campus, BBS the attractiveness of young people also fell sharply, the glorious period to reach the daily average million people online Tsinghua University BBS "Water Wood Tsinghua" Now only about thousands of people on the online level. Rather embarrassing, the Tianya, mop and so on are still the birthplace of many network events, but the events are often quickly taken over by micro-bo "discussion positions."

social gene loss community fading

large, full and QI continue to engage in grafting

Today, the network has developed into a fragmented era, coupled with the business model of social communication products has not been formed, the Pure BBS forum in this era appears to be weak.

CNNIC's 29th China Internet Development Statistics Report, released in 2012, showed that community/bbs users were 144.69 million, with an annual growth rate of minus 2.3%, the first negative growth for the social application in more than 10 years, In the Chinese Netizen scale rises up to 513 million in the big background, the community BBS's predicament is extremely abrupt.

It is the Community BBS and micro-bo, micro-letter for the representative of SNS in the number of users to open up hundreds of millions of gaps, so that people on it "seriously not optimistic."

In fact, the vast majority of users are really concerned about the social, at this point, micro-blogging, micro-credit is obviously more advantageous than the community. In the eyes of the industry, social elements in the BBS community has been in the missing state, which is the subject of the nature of the node to decide, the larger the size of the community, the problem is more serious. The only exception is watercress, because the watercress has audio and video books and groups two have a clear functional division of the plate, so it can be between SNS and community.

Of course, to the horizon as the representative of the big, the full and homogeneous BBS community is not ready to were sitting ducks for its own "genetic defects", just as in the Web 2.0 era they want to graft the community on the blog, and now they are trying to graft some SNS and vertical electric dealer's arm, to alleviate the lack of popularity and spotlight of the plight.

Last November 24, Tianya Vice President Chen at a high-end marketing seminar, said the end of the earth to the new transmission channel impact made a reflection, began to try to combine with the new product form, through the Tianya Forum, blog, microblogging and wireless clients and other applications, integrated micro-blogging, light blog, lbs friends and O2O and other forms. And 2013, the end of the earth will continue to exert "Tianya guest" tourism online business, to tourism as the core online platform, and will open the video business, wireless community, the development of Tianya large data center, to bring customers greater business value.

Chen to the end of the horizon is very clear: "The future is still how to make the thick of the earth become brisk up." ”

Cao Junbo, Eric's chief analyst, said if Tianya could seize the opportunity in the new mobile Internet arena, it could not say that there was no chance to usher in a new breakthrough: "At present, the domestic portal website brand display advertising is shrinking, and has huge traffic in the community website marketing potential has a lot of digging space." ”

　Small but loyal to the ground can be rooted

vertical, localization and other livelihood

Senior IT observer Hongbo is also optimistic about the BBS community: "BBS is not as early as eminence, but it is still a basic internet services." ”

In his view, the future of the BBS community is not really a lot of opportunities for those specialized, vertical and local communities and forums. Community now how to go to the road of SNS, also than micro-bo tens of millions of of the flow of information every day, and those who are too professional or minority topics are not in the big forums and micro-blog Such a large platform has enough to respond, so vertical and professional forum can still pass a certain threshold to screen topics and users. Here, users can find like-minded friends, in-depth and valuable discussion of topics of interest to them, and access to services and products that are difficult to obtain elsewhere. In fact, some of the digital, anime, automotive and other communities are so operating, they are small enough, but there is a group of loyal users to support, through the relevant advertising, peripheral services, they can live.

Hongbo For example, such as Sohu Digital, focus on the owners community precipitated a large group of loyal users, still running very well, even some products launch also through the community.

And this by interest gathered small community, there is a "wonderful" is the military community "blood net", it has in the West Shrine, Tianya, such as "community giants" lined up in the advertising market, narrowly divided into a cup of soup. But when such a flat flat after seven or eight years, the blood net finally found their battlefield: rely on military community, pioneering military e-commerce battlefield.

10 million of the registered users of the iron net is very high, the age of most of the 30-year-old, the audience subdivision degree is very high. These daily longing for Kingo Tiema users, although not a certain type of advertising audience characteristics, but most of the authentic military equipment such as fanaticism. At the end of 2007, the net founder Len Lei himself to pay, from abroad bought 11 Alpha M65 U.S. Army Field Trench test, was soon snapped.

Thus, the "blood June character" was born, "community forum + E-commerce" model has surfaced. This step of the leap, opened a huge market: NET 2011 Profit size has exceeded 10 million, and the annual sales of nearly 100 million.

On the other hand, some communities that can bring real convenience to their users are also gaining opportunities-and the localization community, by virtue of this, is now growing wildly on the ground.

The West Shrine Alley is a good example, when the horizon is still pondering the commercial model of advertising, the West Shrine Hutong has been in Nanjing Nanhu area, the establishment of a 30,000 square meters of the West Shrine block, but also the network of small shops, concentrated online shopping malls, into a network entity shop, through Amoy Lane in the form of the promotion in Nanjing.

Hongbo says the regional forum has been getting more and more hot these years. "such as Hangzhou's ' 19 floor ', such as Chengdu and beer-related communities, are used by the BBS architecture." ”

He mentioned the local community in Hangzhou, "19 Floor" in 2010, the revenue of more than 100 million yuan, the 2011 net profit of more than 30 million yuan, Chengdu, "Four City" 2011 Income scale is also above tens of thousands of yuan.

And Beijing's "Love Ford" Car Club, is a community localization and vertical combination of another typical: this forum to the Ford Motor brand as the basis, and the brand 4S shop, car repair industry together to create a very high viscosity with the user small industrial chain.

As people focus on the big data on Weibo, the various local communities focus more on the daily, local life of the users, and get enough users, traffic and income through targeted services to personally the future of this path.

This may be the characteristic of the business model of the internet age, there is no permanent winner, but there is no natural loser.

　138-bit

December 2012, the world in the Alexa rankings have fallen to 138.

　-2.3%

CNNIC's 29th China Internet Development Statistics Report, released in 2012, showed that community/bbs users were 144.69 million, with an annual growth rate of minus 2.3%, the first negative growth for the social application in more than 10 years.