Du on Sina Transformation: Media + community + Service

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With the outbreak of media and Alibaba injection, Sina Portal Strategic transformation has a greater confidence.

Recently, promoted to Sina joint president of Sina for six months long the CEO du first meeting with the media, she to the "First financial daily" reporter said, Sina media business transformation will be independent, three-dimensional, mobile development, in which, since the media support program is part of the media three-dimensional.

In terms of business model, Sina will also shift from relying too much on advertising to the integrated model of social electric quotient, community value-added services and advertising. This, also benefited from Alibaba strategic injection of resources under the tilt.

"To try and make mistakes in transition."

"Sina's strategic transformation has been in the internal exploration, but now to the most appropriate time." "One industry personage said, under the macro-economic influence advertisement income unfavorable, the internal executive adjustment, the media form should the user demand transformation as well as the Alibaba strategic Partner's introduction, these four reasons, all have provided the foundation for Sina's strategic transformation."

Unlike other portals, Sina's advertising revenue accounts for more than 75% of total revenue. Too single revenue model, making Sina more affected by macroeconomic fluctuations, in 2012, Sina began to fall into the trough of revenue growth.

In February 2013, Sina appointed COO du as co-president, and was fully responsible for the portal business. Another co-CEO is Xu Liangje, head of Cisco's former vice president, in charge of Sina research and development and microblog business. Both directly to Sina Chairman and CEO Charles Chao report.

As a joint president, in the portal business, Du began a bolder reform attempt. This April, Sina began to divide the portal channel into three categories by attribute. First, the commercial channel, only the evaluation of sales tasks, such as automobiles, tourism, and the second is a comprehensive channel, not only to undertake a part of the sales task, but also on the content, flow assessment, such as sports, finance, entertainment, science and technology; third, media channels, such as news Center, do

Du told the reporter, in thinking about the transformation of the issue, the most important question is, internal how to unify the ideas and achieve consensus, according to market changes to constantly adjust, and the courage to try, slow and slow is not necessarily suitable for the Internet.

In the trial and error process, du that the most profound experience is that must be specialized in the operation of the industry, combined with their own advantages, understand what they can do what can not do, rather than doing everything. such as video, Youku Potatoes, Archie art to rob film and television dramas, Sina if also to rob, it is not so appropriate.

From this year's two quarterly earnings, the advertising revenue of the high growth of the portal, its revenue pull mainly from video advertising revenue. Among them, Sohu and Phoenix New media advertising revenue year-on-year growth rate of 45% and 41.9% respectively. Sohu CEO Charles Zhang said to this newspaper, Sohu Video advertising revenue year-on-year growth rate of more than 100%, pulling the overall advertising revenue to promote Sohu. Phoenix New Media CEO Lyapunov also told this newspaper that its advertising revenue mainly from the video and mobile side of the upgrade.

Du that Sina in the transformation of thinking, does not intend through the film and television play copyright purchase to boost video, in the long run, the copyright procurement model is not suitable for Sina. Sina's approach is, through the establishment of the network platform to introduce Third-party copyright content, and secondly, through the media, micro-blog, to create and disseminate original video content, third, the video and vertical channels are integrated to build.

For example, Sina has long been the most prominent sports channels, the media content, micro-bo social, sports video, related video programs and sport products to create a vertical community. In August this year, Sina spent hundreds of millions of dollars to sign NBA exclusive video cooperation, after signing, Sina Sports and the NBA content integration is also regarded as the first exploration of Sina channel reform.

Du said that Sina's past 90% content teams are editors, but do the community, do the product is not the same, the division of labor will be more diverse, from the management mechanism, Sina hopes to build up the team and the interests of the company is consistent, equivalent to an "internal entrepreneurship", but the equity incentive, or in the channel independence after the introduction of external investment issues, It is still more cautious.

Du said that Sina is thinking of "media + Community + Services" channel transformation, which, "media" refers to the traditional graphics and text and video, mobile class new media; Community "refers to the micro-blog content and channel integration after the Community shape;" Service "refers to the electronic business services and value-added services under the former two.

will not blindly design direction for Ali

"Media + community + Services" channel transformation, accompanied by changes in the business model. Sina will also be pulled from an over-reliance on advertising revenues to social and value-added services. Behind this, depends on the entire resources of the ecological structure, and Alibaba's strategic injection of funds to provide help.

At the end of April this year, Alibaba spent 586 million of billions of dollars on Sina Weibo's 18% stake. In the framework of the two sides of the agreement, also stipulated that Ali will be Sina Weibo to bring 3 years of 380 million U.S. dollars of revenue. Relevant people to our correspondent said that 380 million of dollars, a considerable part of the advertisement is discounted.

In fact, the deal is not simply a merger between Ali and Weibo, or Ali's strategic partnership with the entire Sina system. These people believe that with Sina Weibo in the transformation of Sina played an increasingly important role, Ali on Sina's strategic impact and resource assistance will also be more obvious.

What can be seen is that after Ali shares Sina Weibo, Chao has repeatedly expressed the importance of social electric quotient to Sina Weibo and even the whole Sina. While the commercialization of microblogs is controversial and difficult to reconcile in terms of user experience and business balance, Sina has to get rid of a single advertising revenue model from a business model perspective.

Du says Weibo is a good fit for the C2B model, in micro-blog users can find their own points of interest, but also easier to achieve through customization, and this model is zero inventory, operational risk than traditional electricity quotient small, in the "Media + Community + Service" Channel mode, can promote higher conversion rate.

But the C2B model relies on the integration of large data, in the mining of a large number of data, the platform can more accurately understand the user needs, and match the resources at both ends of the transaction.

"It's not easy to do one thing", in order to better integrate, Sina has sent a team to Hangzhou and Ali docking. Du said that in the 3 months after Alibaba invested in Sina Weibo, the two sides are mainly in the user account system and data to get through, followed by mobile end product exploration.

"But Sina is not for the 3-year 380 million dollar framework that Ali has brought to the consumer." Du said that Sina will not blindly for Alibaba's strategic needs to design the direction of its media transformation on the one hand, the user needs have changed, followed by the user itself has become a producer. "For example, Sina Sports users need a Lakers jersey, then Sina should be for this user needs to match the purchase and sale of resources." ”

In addition to the electrical business, through which there are value-added services, for example, in the future, based on the Weibo account of the channel membership system, users in the channel of electricity, games, virtual goods and other needs can be expressed through membership points, through payment means to achieve, this also gives Sina future independent channel to build a service closed loop.

But the issues that Sina needs to address in the future are much more than these. On the regulation of Big V's speech, Du said Sina Weibo had not been much affected by the daily activity, "the current microblogging activity is more than 60 million, compared with 38 million last year".

And for the portal and micro-blog advertising "left and right", Du said, Sina is also in accordance with the different advertising customers to divide the sales team. Brand customers, portals and micro-blogging platform will do, small and medium-sized customers, mainly local team to do, you can choose to do a micro-BO platform, rather than the use of a one-size-fits-all approach.