Easy to pay the price

Absrtact: The more easily made pattern in the early days, the greater the challenge of self. Easy to pay the price, this is the Internet product equivalent exchange rules. In China's networked storage products in the near-overwhelming dominance of the entire market ranked the first 115 network, suddenly

The more easily made patterns of the early years, the greater the challenge of self. "Easy" will pay the price, this is the Internet product "equivalent Exchange law."

In China's networked storage products in the near-overwhelming dominance of the entire market ranked the first "115 network disk", suddenly encountered a lot of people identified as "sudden death"-as a public-oriented online storage services, August 7, 2012, 115 network disk in the absence of any warning, the shutdown of the public sharing function.

After the public-sharing function was turned off, on the Alexa website's data map, the 115 network plate drew a startling downward curve. As of October 26, 2012, 115 net plate (115.com) in the world rankings from 500 to 1009, down nearly 460, page Views (pageview) 3 months fell nearly 50%, the arrival rate of more than half of the decline.

Before this, 115 net dish actually have how cow? In an interview with business Value Magazine, one of the industry insiders, who has dedicated "traffic" in several well-known internet companies, said: "Although many places have included 115, data warehousing, Huawei Network and many other options in providing resources for downloading, But 115 lead other opponents too much. According to the usage rate, 115 should account for more than 80% of the market share. ”

Intuitive feeling is that in a long period of time with Baidu search for a variety of resources, randomly point to the top of the search results, everywhere are 115 of the figure. A more specific example is the mobile Internet well-known products "cloth card Comics", which has hundreds of thousands of of comic-loving active users, using 115 of the storage services, peak to achieve 1G per second traffic. In other words, only this product, its users one hours from 115 download more than 3000G of comic resources.

All day 24 hours uninterrupted, massive comics, TV dramas, games and other resources, from 115 to thousands of Web sites and mobile products, and into the user's computer and mobile phone, at the same time, there is a huge amount of resources from the client itself to upload Web sites and mobile products, and into 115 of the server.

By the end of May 2012, 115 network disk has more than 40 million registered users, its server users upload resources can not be measured, and in the form of links, 115 of meridians also permeate the entire Chinese internet has a variety of resources to download the demand for products and pages. Also because of its strong, November 2011, 115 network disk in Guangdong 115 Technology Co., Ltd. won the 20 million dollar a round of financing.

As a result, in the resources snowball in the user, the site and 115 between the constant roll up more than 3 years later, 115 suddenly in the user download mercilessly cut down, blocking the resources of the downward outflow.

The inevitable growth dilemma

115 Network Plate May 20, 2009 officially launched, and then on the basis of the network version, April 15, 2010 launched a local upload and download the client excellent eggs (ie, u eggs). Like many networked storage services, the core function is that a registered user can upload data on a certain space limit and generate a link to share for others to download. The bright spot of the product is simple and direct: free, space is big, fast stable, convenient and easy to use, and have no too many requests for downloading, even once did not request registration can download.

The founder of the 115, the Guangdong Xingning people Railing Feng (Weibo), who started with the rain forest wind pirate Windows operating system, is called the "cow Man" representative of the grassroots Internet entrepreneur, along with Cai, Hao123 founder Xingping (Weibo). In the pirated windows of various schools, the rain Forest Wind Ghost XP The biggest feature is simply straightforward, "one-click to restore Windows XP", because the simple ease of use in the early Internet quickly became the favorite of Internet cafes throughout the country.

This kind of business is not on the table, plainly is to rely on advertising to make money. Pirated windows will be embedded in the "pre-installed software", in IE browser pre-installed Plug-ins, and even directly on the IE start page to use their own navigation site. The navigation website owned by Railing Maple is "114" (114la.com).

In the early Chinese Internet, pirated windows itself has a huge market demand, while an installation disk cost less than 5 cents, the price of 2-10 yuan, there is a lot of profit space, which makes Bathers, tomato garden and other pirated windows can spread quickly, and from "End" to "cloud", In the process of unintentional clicks of computer users, they get huge traffic with very low cost (the concept of "user" is not possible at this time).

With the flow, the most direct way to change is to sell to the need for traffic, as well as the need for users of the PC client. Many now very well-known websites and internet products, such as Taobao, were pirated Windows customers. Some of the more pursuit of pirated Windows developers, after making money will soon be transferred to the formal operation and the next business operation, with the flow of consciously cultivate their own "on the stage" products.

Railing Maple in which the most ideal. In particular, the tomato Garden author Hong Lei in jail for Microsoft crackdown, and other authors run away, he promptly received a robbery, began to "sit on the Golden Hill", thinking about the next step of development.

For many Chinese grassroots entrepreneurs, although relying on the "grounding gas" and do not have to consider too many of the bottom line of strong executive power, can quickly get the first bucket of gold, but because of vision, technical capabilities and other limitations, to go further up the difficult. Railing Maple selected path is based on the Linux research and development of rain forest wind has its own operating system, Windows operating system unified the trend of the river is limited, has been difficult to find. Later, he finally put the focus on the windows-based "cloud operating System", that is, the Web site directly provide similar operating system desktop and various functions (Tencent has been through the Web QQ to explore similar roads), and 115 network disk, that is, the "cloud computing" is an important link.

By 115 of the development path is not difficult to see, Railing Maple The first plan is to upload and share user resources as the core competitiveness, attracting a large number of users, on the one hand in their "Cloud OS" circle a better control of the flow, on the other hand, through the resource sharing mechanism, can build a resource as the core of the social relations of friends. But in the future, the product becomes more and more focused in the development, most users only to the demand of the network disk without the whole "cloud OS" demand, and the core of the relationship between the resources is difficult to continue.

However, rely on a large amount of capital investment and rain forest wind has a strong flow channel resources, 115 network disk rapid rise. and other storage products such as foreign Dropbox, 115 it is difficult to provide a charge of VIP services to obtain enough space for growth, and because the market does not exist in fact what user loyalty, competition makes 115 difficult like foreign mega online storage, set a high download threshold, And then continue to use the low threshold of fees and charges to attract users to pay.

In the "storage" can not be directly into a business situation, 115 network disk to have their own ways to make money, after all, back to the "flow of cash" habits of the routine. "115 does not have the Enterprise class service, its profit pattern is gathers the massive flow to carry on the present." "Why are 115 of advertising sites full of pages (web games)? Because it is the highest rate of flow conversion," said the insider. ”

But at the same time, 115 network disk Huge server and bandwidth cost pressure, also with its rapid growth and become very big, according to Railing Maple, "Every month in network bandwidth, server equipment and technology research and development personnel are astronomical." In contrast, compared with the browser or even pirated windows, 115 network Although the flow of large, but in the flow value conversion efficiency is not high enough to fully support the entire company, not to mention Railing Maple is still seeking to go public.

On this basis, coupled with the Railing maple "from gray to white" from the grassroots demand, users and traffic in their own web site is not so happy things. Even if it has been merged into more than 100 million yuan, but if can not find enough to penetrate the market of new force point, 115 network disk can not have a real future.

Soar "Cornucopia"

"For the truly successful Chinese internet entrepreneurs, no matter what the business, must be familiar with the flow of the road." Especially for grass-roots entrepreneurs, a little broken, rapid convergence of the flow, will let them have ' turn the hand for the cloud, covering hands for rain ' pleasure, because the traffic is the Internet's ' hard currency '. "A practitioner who knows the grey part of the Chinese Internet is very straightforward about business value," says the "Fujian Gang", which has a distinctive internet connection, and wants the internet to start a business. ”

Flow of the river is unusually complex, which almost every link, are involved in some not known to outsiders secrets, as well as the breakthrough product line or even the moral bottom line of practice. After the piracy of Windows, China entered the age of rogue software, the naked users of kidnapping and theft is not uncommon. Although today, the forced boot up, quietly installed browser plug-ins, bind the browser start page, such practices have been greatly convergent, but under the water, the Internet gray area of business has never stopped.

such as piracy, books, video, software, games and other resources of the illegal spread has never stopped. Whether it is in the beginning of the Chinese online stolen text of the novel site, or a lot of "cracked version, registered version" software download site, video seed sharing site, or Xbox, PSP and other games "Exchange Forum", no one is relying on the very low cost of the gathering of pirated resources to attract users.

Starting with a strong business model and an open and cooperative Web site consortium, these sites have the most convenient means of traffic liquidity. As early as 2005, once in the circle of such stories: A XI ' an Jiaotong university, the computer department of the junior students, with less than a week to build a simple HTML pirated software download page, and then hang Google Adsense next to the first one months of income over 10,000 yuan.

How to enable "user needs" to find their own web site? This involves a search engine is also a big headache, kill the problem, that is, SEO (Search engine optimization). In short, these sites through the good support of search engines, even search engine crawl, ranking rules of the study, to the unconventional means to obtain some keyword search rankings. This allows users to import their site when they are using a search engine.

In the process, a large number of sites called "garbage stations" have been formed. From the product point of view they are worthless, but Mickle, no one can ignore their huge traffic.

Based on these, some Web services have been able to become famous overnight at very low cost. For example, in the last two years, the popularity of the fast-broadcast video business, the game is to accumulate a large number of online pirated video resources to watch, at the same time have their own set of flow pattern (for example, to the page), and then in the union organization of the garbage station to promote, hang their own video playback page site, can be based on the flow of income; These garbage stations and thus the SEO, from the search engine to get the corresponding traffic, and import to the video business.

There is also a gray area, is peer-to-peer (point-to-point transmission technology). When the user is watching the video, it is required to install the video quotient plug-in, and the function of the plug-in is to make a contribution out of the user's bandwidth while watching the video. A large number of user-contributed bandwidth, congestion of the carrier network, but greatly reduced the video business itself bandwidth expenditure.

This kind of play grassroots entrepreneurs are accustomed to, similar to, whether it is like 115 network disk such as network storage products, or download software started a more famous internet company, in the "resource-flow" business is also applied to the extreme. But for them, there is a more "advanced" approach, that is, even resources do not have to collect themselves, but "users upload themselves."

User upload not only can launch the "masses" of power, let oneself accumulate resources faster, and when it comes to piracy and even illegal information, there is a "user responsible for" the firewall.

Because many of the original server downloads are limited and "dead chain" (Unable to download), "Offline download" function has the use, the paying user does not need to download locally, only needs to submit the address, the service provider will help you to download on own server, then lets the user from its server to download the content by the highest speed; For video and other content, even no need to download two times, click to play online.

Where have all the resources gone? Upload, the user's resources to 115 and other server servers, and then to other users of the server, offline, users submit applications, a large number of discrete server resources to the 115 service providers of servers, and then by the server to users.

Thus, 115 network disk in a variety of play, driven by the stability of services and good product performance soar at the same time, not only has a huge amount of traffic, but also the Internet massive resources converge on their own server. Who do these resources belong to? There is virtually no definition of this issue. The massive resources continuously in the server "burns the money", but also contains the huge wealth, and encounters the user "downloads the resources" The strong demand, gives 115 to bring more with the user game the chip.

To the end, hard to turn

After the 115 shutdown, Railing Maple once said: "It is inevitable to shut down the mass sharing, and sooner or later all to do." There are a lot of policy, privacy and copyright risks in the public sharing function. Some users use the public to share the functions of the fast and convenient dissemination of some illegal and bad information. At the same time, he also said that the closure of the Internet users of the file sharing, the use of the network is far less serious than the outside imagination.

In fact, 115 also have their own unspeakable difficulties. Its rapid growth benefits from the "flow channel parasitic" and "computer Channel parasitic" many play, but in its growth, around the 115 network disk, but also gradually attracted the Internet gray field of many "network disk parasitic" players.

Taobao Search 115 Network disk, you can find nearly 4,000 business results. What are they selling? The most is the "115 network disk VIP Account Day rental." The business of the game, is to buy a lot of businesses have a large network space and upload, download the speed of VIP account, and then they rent out according to time, when ordinary users have a sudden upload and download demand, only to use a few cents of the price can be done. To 115来 said, this is equivalent to each VIP account will own bandwidth and server resources to the extreme, can be biased and meet its requirements, technically difficult to limit.

There is also a "Keep account" method. 115 in order to improve the user stickiness and other purposes, have their own set and other network disk similar account system, in short, upload more, share more, recommend others register more, users can get the larger space and the higher permissions. Under such rules, many people use hanging machines and machines to quickly create a large number of "top free accounts" and sell them. Many of the actual unused accounts generated in this way, including the sharing of their traffic and resources, are virtually worthless.

The more exaggerated "network disk parasitic" approach is to crack the 115 protocol directly, bypassing a series of front-end mechanisms, directly enjoy 115 of the bandwidth and server. There are quite a number of mobile products, especially mobile handsets, that have been used intensively for some time, and for the less than 115 of the technology, this has greatly increased its costs and dissipated a lot of technical energy.

Coupled with the internet's long-term "engage in traffic" approach, "no traffic business is not adulterated", the flow of the CPA (Pay-per-click) prices are getting lower, greatly offset the rapid increase in the flow of value. In addition, there are rumours that in 2012, 115 was "checked" for resource problems.

115 the way to soar, is becoming its own lingering nightmare. In such circumstances, 115 finally chose the "self-waste martial arts", will be their "one to the end."

After the 115 shutdown, there were still two ways to keep the flow of resources. First, each user uploaded resources, stored in his own space, download users must be added to the user as a friend, to upload users agree to enter the space and download. However, ordinary users have friend restrictions, unless they are partners or paid users to increase-to force resources to download business sites and clients to either leave or pay.

Second, the VIP users can not enter the resource upload space, direct resources from the link into their own space and download--ordinary users either not resources, or pay.

This is a dangerous game. To 115来 said, although this can evade the risk to a greater extent, eliminate "parasitic", enhance the flow of cash outside the user pay directly paid income, but from the actual data can be seen, it also has to withstand great turbulence, the risk of being discarded by the user.

And to 115来 said, the courage to take such a radical approach, the greatest reliance is resources. Many resource sites and users in the 3-year period, a large amount of resources have been "hosted" on 115 of servers, and when the 115 network is occupied with enough or even exclusive resources, it costs a great deal of money to migrate or to modify the number of 115 links on its own web page. Most of the resources site, especially the forum is "iron Camp", the former upload resources may not be found, migration is not easy.

For ordinary users, the resources to download suddenly encounter "pay to use", there will be some compromise, and the compromise of the "VIP" since the payment, in the payment period to become 115 more loyal users is also inevitable. The key point is how high the "User value conversion rate" is, with a user base of 115 up to 40 million, and how many real-money payers can be brought in.

And on top of that, many deep users, even if they are slow, after all, the product line of the 115 network has been suspected. Users to upload and share the resources, in the end is the user all, or into 115 of the wealth? This is the online "naked resource plunder" approach, and finally become the user to enjoy the free high-speed network service of the brewing bitter fruit.

For 115, it takes a great deal of courage to subvert yourself. But it will naturally look closely at the changes in the data and wait for the right time to slowly try to control the flow of resources and find a balance after the grey approach.

This unprecedented approach, in the habit of piracy, forgetfulness and brand loyalty of Chinese users and exotic market environment, may allow 115 to find a winding road to victory. But in the new Baidu network disk, 360 network disk, such as real internet big Guy's new round of attack, 115 whether there is so ample time gap, not yet known.

Instead, in the difficult transition to more products grown by the grey market, perhaps Chinese users can cultivate more common sense and promote the use of the Internet, at which point 115 brings value from the opposite. And 115 in the use of various means to quickly obtain the first wave of success, this is its "success too easy" after the inevitable cost.