13 "Journey": from BBS to the net value of 200 million U.S. dollars

August 15, the 13 anniversary of the network, online activities under the overwhelming. Born in 2001, the network has now become the influential radiation 200 million learners, nearly 80 million registered users, 3 million students of the domestic largest Internet education enterprises. From doing the community to do the electricity business, and then to the school, and then to mobile terminals, 13 years to focus on online education, can be said to be a pioneer, but also the industry leaders. With the development of online education and investment in the last two years, the company has become an indispensable sample to understand the online education enterprises in China. 13 Growth Road 2001, at the time for the Shanghai Polytechnic University Junior Students of the Arnold (NET founder of Voyayary) founder of the Lin Forum, and all the success of the BBS, 2002, the gathering of a large number of free learning foreign language resources of the community soon become the national learning foreign Language one of the hottest community. At that time, Chus gave birth to a flourishing of language training. After in-depth communication with netizens, Arnold according to their different needs of learning foreign languages, in the BBS targeted to increase listening, translation and other practical modules. And in 2005 on the line of "Jiang Blog", for the needs of users founded 46, Japanese, postgraduate, IELTS and other channels, and launched the "Web2.0 Tribe" Community Edition, strengthen the user's in-depth social. "Do users need products" become Arnold insisted on the idea, after his continuous efforts, to graduate, that is, 2006, the Hu has gathered about 200,000 users. Obviously such a large number of users, as well as the stickiness of the site, all show that it will be a great wealth. And Arnold also logically chose to start a business, the net from "initial interest" to the business operation. The network still defines itself as the internet media. Like many online media, they initially chose the path of advertising revenue. For a long time, advertising from publishers, various training institutions and language schools has become the main revenue of the network. "Because of the large number of users, the most start to feed their own practice is to rely on advertising to eat, most of the domestic training institutions are the advertising partners, so more like a network media." Yuje, who co-founded the co-founder of the Network, told the 21st century economic reporter. In order to break the excessive reliance on advertising, coupled with the rapid development of Taobao and other electric dealers, but also because of the user to learn, learning materials and curriculum needs of a very high degree of correlation, the network began in 2007 to open the business, the BBC, the VOA official content authorization, become Casio, Good easy access Electronic dictionary official authorized network sales channels, and New Oriental online, China Accounting school to become partners, online sales of their courses. Electric business has once become the main source of revenue, but not long, after the 2008 financial crisis, advertising and electric business decline, Arnold frankly was the most difficult time, he has been looking for the next can bring profits, more sustainable development of the expansion of new products. Based on millions registered users, the network began to seek from the public service to the charging mode of operationTransformation. You know, as long as someone pays, the company can make a profit. 2009, the mobile phone WAP online, at the same time will be the tribal change into SNS learning platform, the introduction of the mobile end of the market in 2011, 2012 to promote platform value-added services ... Interestingly, the growth process of the UGC almost absorbs and draws on all forms of China's Internet industry since its inception, from portals to blogs to video, to electronic business to micro blogs to mobile, but they always revolve around community and community learners ' learning needs. All based on the needs of community users, coupled with a cautious style, so that the users will soon grow to the million, then the annual millions growth. 2009, the company moved into the Zhangjiang High-tech Park, when the staff of nearly 70 people. Today, the network has nearly 700 employees, nearly 80 million registered users, 3 million students of the large-scale Internet education enterprises. Through the user needs to find direction 2009, the domestic online education is still in hibernation, the industry's overall atmosphere has not formed. Another interesting background is that the employment situation caused by the financial crisis is so weak that the demand for more competition is rising, and there are many different kinds of courses on the line of the community. Arnold once again through the needs of users to find the direction of the network. At that time, many organizations have vigorously developed the field of video education, hope that the offline education scene as true as possible to copy to the line. But Arnold chose to take a different route. "Through the survey, we found that users of the teacher's voice and the clarity of the courseware requirements higher, the teacher's ticket, teaching scenes not much to look forward to." Therefore, we use multimedia Rich Text technology, highlighting the voice of teachers, and flash to present a clear and orderly courseware. "This innovation has gained a lot of positive feedback," said Huadang, co-founder and vice president of the network. Obviously audio rather than video, there is also an important reason, that is, to save costs, compared to those who burn money video education website, in the same section of online courses, video recording, storage, bandwidth, etc. are much higher than audio. Huadang that, to do education products, the core competitiveness is also the original content, on the basis of thick accumulation of thin hair. At the beginning of the line, the network dedicated to employing more than 100 teachers as their full-time staff, the production of various courses. The net is the start of language learning, now the course content has included primary and secondary school curriculum, vocational education, early education and piano and other interest courses, but language learning still accounted for about 70% of its share. However, another problem has been puzzling the online education industry, that is, online education client A few mandatory, users can start or terminate the service at any time, but also for any reason to leave the client, so online education products user stickiness has been a problem.