3G Portal: The hurricane effect of free mode

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From 2 users grew to 100 million registered users, daily active user 15 million, 3G Portal took 5 years.

October 2009, Guangzhou Long Bang Digital Technology Co., Ltd. is located in Guangzhou Zhujiang New city quietly held a celebration, the company's CEO Deng the phone as a dice roll out a series of numbers-100 million, which is state digital technology operation of the 3G Portal network in October 2009 to achieve the total number of registered users, Annual turnover is expected to reach 150 million yuan, to achieve from the "burning Money" to "profit" of the reverse.

As early as the beginning of the 2009 3G license plate issued, the 3G market has been hard to explore the beginners, and 3G network after years of groping, and finally found the policy impact of the huge market erratic, "small key", the business model has gradually formed.

The "Hurricane effect" of free mode

In early 2004, Deng and Zhang two people in Guangzhou Tianhe Stone West Road, a 6 square meters of the cabin, to build China's largest free mobile phone website.

March 16, the 3G portal officially online. The number of online people on that day was only 2-Deng, Zhang. How to sell? This is a big problem. Not so much money, there is no channel to cooperate with operators, they think of viral marketing: to their own seed, spread, wildfire.

They first aimed at those who do not have Internet experience and mobile phone players on the internet, in a variety of mobile phone forums to send posts, and invited then Mobile Dream Network Forum moderators to 3G portal to do moderator. These moderators also by virtue of the special status in the forum, to 3G portal to bring a large number of active users.

"The domestic internet is relatively easy to form a crowding effect, also known as the Hurricane effect, that has high-quality information and content of the business, users will take the initiative to move closer to it, rather than relying on money to advertise, users do not eat this set." "said Cao Ming, vice president of 3G Portal market.

It is in this mode, the emergence of free WAP has won the support of users, in addition to students, selling mobile phones have become their propaganda. At the same time, they use every dinner, meeting, travel ... They participate as much as possible in the social activities they can think of and participate in.

3G Portal In this process to become "Independent free WAP website" representatives, on-line 8 months, the user volume reached 1 million.

Advertising is content, entertainment is advertising

With customers, how to make money?

The founder of state Technology has positioned the website as "media". According to the traditional profit model of the media, commercial interests must be sought from advertisers. However, in the mobile site advertising operation, Zhang to subvert the definition of traditional advertising.

From March 24, 2006 onwards, 3G Portal began to officially operate mobile phone ads, through a "Play quiz game, send BenQ MP3" link, BenQ first in the 3G portal opened a zone to provide the freshest products and brand information. This is the first mobile marketing case in the free independent WAP field. Zhang, chairman of the Media Marketing Consulting Group, told the China Business News reporter.

But this kind of advertising is just an attempt. A brand marketing manager told reporters that he was not optimistic about mobile internet advertising, because of the screen size restrictions, the effect of the dissemination is not obvious.

There is still a lack of support for this claim. In this respect, Zhang said: "This statement is not professional!" He retorted that mobile advertising has more advantages than traditional media advertising, such as "the most recent media," with the ability to integrate media, multimedia features more powerful and so on.

Journalist Zhang, the definition of mobile internet advertising is: Advertising is content, entertainment is advertising. Christmas 2007, fashion brand, through the sponsorship of "Help Santa Hunt Elk" Interactive Game login 3G portal, to do game icon embedded ads, this way in two weeks to attract more than 4 million users click and participate.

"One of the bad impressions that traditional ads give people is that they are disruptive, and forced to insert traditional ads for users under the influence of new media, like parents ' preaching to rebellious children." Emphasis on interaction and entertainment, so that users participate in the advertising effect is one of the important criteria. Zhang said, free WAP on the best way to move the mobile marketing is the combination of push and pull, the first activity to stimulate the interaction of netizens, and then more frequent brand products implanted in the hearts of consumers.

This advertising model has created 3 consecutive years of doubling performance. Since 2008, a number of mobile phone manufacturers, even mobile operators, as well as nine major banks to the 3G portal advertising. 2009-year performance is expected to break 150 million yuan, growth of 50%.

"Website + client" combination of flavor Adhesive

See independent free WAP mode advantage of operator shortage. At the end of 2006, the domestic already appeared tens of thousands of WAP websites, the internet several big portals also have established WAP website successively, homogeneous competition is serious.

At this point, the 3G portal faces challenges: How to stick 10 million of users firmly, become loyal users, to deal with the Giants into the market competition.

"At that time, we are not unable to make money, we are more concerned about the continued popularity of the circle." "At the time, Zhang said, it was all about how low-cost, interesting ways to get people to know the mobile Web site that provides free content."

"We believe that the Internet's profitability must be based on user needs, to ensure a large number of user base, but also to ensure that they have the demand for gold." Deng said that as early as 2006, they began to layout mobile phone client software, developed a "site + client" strategy.

Since 2004 on the line, anytime, anywhere mobile internet to look at information is a daily application, but how to enable users to save money, more convenient to open mobile phone access to services on the network? The responsiveness of the client is obviously more important than the network.

"China Mobile is offering 5 dollars for 30M one months. With the client Internet, can be in the limited traffic to achieve more information download. Moreover, the operation of the client is very easy to be used by the user, thus sticking to the customer. "The Deng of IT technology, the understanding of the development client is similar to Moore's law."

June 2006, 3G Portal launched the first version of mobile phone streaming media player Ggtv, mainly used to support mobile TV live, mobile movies, network video and so on demand. March 2007, GGTV more than 500,000 independent active users every day. April 2007, 3G Portal announced the launch of a new player gglive, installation of the software can be on-demand programs, can also watch the NBA, concerts, and so on all kinds of live.

Connect mobile client products directly to the Forum and news page of the portal, participate in the interaction, can let the number of advertising coverage to increase, thereby achieving the advertising effect. Deng that this is equivalent to "flavor" plus "viscose", can attract, but also can be firmly stuck.

Guo Rong also contributed to this article

Expert opinion

Uncertain 3G prospects

Zhang, chairman of the Media Advisory Group:

All along, the 3G portal too much emphasis on advertising as the main revenue model, I personally do not agree. In three years, China's wireless advertising may be difficult to continue the current brilliance of PC Internet, I believe that a single mobile phone site advertising capacity determines the total capacity of its advertising. I suggest that the 3G portal network use a large number of users in the user's paid products can expand some revenue models, such as pay reading, mobile games, SNS, and so on, from the 3G portal can not be questioned the size of the user, can be launched early charging items, revenue ideas are clear.

Polytechnic, dean of the School of Journalism and communication Li Jue:

3G through a large number of users for free use, to the mobile operators to bring huge traffic benefits, and operators are only paid activities to promote the fee, this distribution of the 3G portal is not cost-effective. In addition, as the media, the 3G Web portal on the advertising model is not a problem, but it lacks the advantages of content production, so it is not as traditional media as strong original content. If only by content services alone, some of the business, such as live video, may still be replaced by other media tools. Mobile phone as a media channel, its application direction determines the future, so should more consider the future application of the market direction, such as mobile search business, representing the new forces of the market.