Maixiao's business: Everybody loves to hear jokes.

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Lead: As the leader of the trend culture, how much is the value of the product? Is it big enough to get venture capital and even seek a listing?

Due to the recent completion of the 100 million U.S. dollar C-round financing and the focus of today's headlines, the founding phase of the initial release of a few products are not today's personalized information recommendation engine, but "funny embarrassing picture" "connotation of the joke" and other categories of products. Until now, the "content of the joke" in the flow is not inferior.

Who says that jokes can't form an industry? Since the "Embarrassing encyclopedia" and "cold jokes selected" From the beginning, through the form of text, pictures, short video, such as the collection of various types of private original fun or spoof content of the Internet products, forming the internet era-specific entertainment. If compared with traditional media, they are "news agencies", but also the leader of the trend culture.

And these products have very little input costs (basically mental input), but can be self-financing. If it is a stand-alone site, it quickly becomes a large volume of traffic, if it is large-scale products, and micro-bo, micro-letter and other content distribution channels formed a perfect upstream and downstream relationship.

VC has a fancy to this kind of company, with a variety of funny pictures of the United States website Imgur recently completed 40 million U.S. dollars in financing, 8 months of time flow of billions of ViralNova also be more than VC investment. This raises questions about how valuable these products are, and how big enough it is to get venture capital and even to go public.

I. Case

Imgur

Founded in 2009, identity is a picture storage, processing and sharing service provider, due to be able to follow a variety of UGC pictures of the popularity of the arrangement, and became a picture comedy site. It collects pictures in one hand, the other hand processing pictures (to provide meme picture maker, let users will be on the network of Red image resources or their own original pictures at random processing), 2012 reached the monthly browse volume of 2 billion, recently received a16z 40 million U.S. dollars a round of financing.

9Gag

Founded in 2008, originally headquartered in Hong Kong, 2012 to move to the Bay Area, is a funny content aggregation site, in 2011 until the slow growth of the state, after a sudden explosion of growth, in 2012, each post on its website on average 1000 to 2,500 times to share. 2.8 million of dollars in venture capital has since been obtained.

ViralNova

Nearly one year in the world's most popular content class Independent website (not one), content to interesting, valuable for the purpose, daily update 3-6 articles, attaches great importance to the quality of graphics and text. Founded in May 2013, 8 months after the month to visit more than 100 million users, only 3 people maintenance (of which 2 are part-time), monthly income of more than hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars, and above only Google AdSense and a small number of advertising promotion. Favored by a number of venture capitalists, but now refuses any investment.

Cheezburger

Founded in 2007, has contributed to a variety of network elements, the 2011-2012 rounds of financing amounted to 37.5 million U.S. dollars, investors, including Madrona, Avalon, soft silver capital.

Encyclopedia of Embarrassing Things

China's most influential original embarrassing sharing platform, established in 2005, following the UGC principle, users can freely contribute, vote, comment, audit content, and interact with other netizens. Mobile client launched in 2012.

Integrity Jokes

A collection of content platforms with no integrity jokes and funny graphs.

Moral selection

"To provide for the" of the joke app, there are graphic posts, long audio, GIF three categories of content, the future will increase video content. For "The Wind to" "Beijing Love Story" and other 20 dozen films have done marketing promotion.

Fei Bo

Its products such as "Cold jokes selected" "Constellation Secret Language" "movie Assembly Number" and so on, to micro-broad started, there are apps, for many customers to carry out social media marketing.

The comic strip.

A popular network of open comics, through exaggerated portrait to express the mood of cartoon characters, can be made and published by ordinary netizens who do not have the foundation of art. There are independent PCs and apps that are constantly generating new content.

Ii. Confessions

If you want to have a bigger future, you must join the social

Hua: CEO of Moral selection

2012 our project called "Sound", a high-end positioning of audio products, has been Xiaoping the investment of teachers. At the same time, we found that in the sound of the most popular is all kinds of funny and "no integrity" jokes, on the transition to "moral selection", in the product is not on line to get the nine partners to invest in the venture's Angel investment.

There was great potential and space in this area of entertainment, and at the moment it was worth spiraling. The UGC will become the backbone of society, and they are almost always entertaining, like holding the phone to brush these jokes or other content. The genes for entertainment flow in their blood, and they need to be supplemented with recreational content like "calcium deficiency". It took us a long time to study these users. It's even found that many users have more than one entertainment app on their phones. Because the information acquisition ability is particularly strong, and entertainment content everywhere, so they are more and more picky.

So the "moral selection" is going to be an amusement entrance. We are now the form of PGC (professionally-generated content, professional production) rather than pure UGC. On the internet, less than 1% of quality content is consumed by most people, even less than the "28 principle". Moral selection set up a "Ni-ma Intelligence Unit" "eccentric posture" and many other series, each series has multiple content contributors. In terms of the amount of content, there are fewer of them than some of the same products, and I tend to be more content after laying a solid foundation.

After becoming a portal or platform, we and other satin products are no longer competitors but potential partners.

But the content is not enough, it is difficult to have a bigger future. In fact, users only care about two points: whether the content is interesting and whether the people inside have meaning. I used to be an independent producer, I think the content of similar products is like a long shot, the comment is another long shot, very few people can talk in the comments here. I want to add a montage that brings comments and content together to create a social network that presents a vibrant state of communication between users and two of creations. A new version will be available in the next month or two.

Of course, this social product form is currently confidential and will be different from other products. This feeling is like whenever and the "beep Mile" will feel the top of the barrage is too messy, but the experience will feel very natural.

What does the satin industry get without high valuations?

Iguang: Founder and CEO of Fei Bo

How big is the satin industry? From the principle of analysis: The joke is the entertainment industry, the investment in the industrial sector is like Ma Yun Investment football team, is a short time to converge a lot of traffic, very topical products. Social development, people's working time will be compressed, boring time increased, need to rely on entertainment to pass the time.

In business, the present jokes are long tails, there are some comedy centers such as Zhao Benshan, Zhou Libo, Guo, they have the flow and influence, at this time need to pass through Cross-border methods, such as Liu Lao Gen Stage, "Tonight's talk show" and so on to show and realize, as far as I know the latter's annual income of billions. The performers are these people, and there are a lot of people in the jokes, so it's a long tail. The jokes make these shows can be reused, otherwise you won't look at the same show for the second time.

And happiness is a demand, it can make money as a brand and positioning. Hunan TV's slogan is "Happy China", a yearly income of 6 billion-7 billion. You don't have to charge for "happy", but you can expand your business with a sense of happiness, just as 360 doesn't charge through "security," but it takes security as a way to charge across other industries, such as browsers and smart hardware.

If it is located in pleasure and entertainment, also pay attention to the atmosphere. Comments like NetEase are special, allowing you to see the creativity of the different roles behind the various views. The most important piece platform is the soil, chatting on the Internet, you a sentence I, a laugh point out to become a joke. With the soil, there will be more possibilities.

I have always thought that the industry is very big, based on the basic needs of happiness, all of the above reasoning direction is I want to try, is now in progress.

As for whether the industry can be large enough to get venture capital, I think even a football team can sell to 1.2 billion. is the position "funny" not a great value? 360 as early as security, others are not convinced! Life is a labor of toil, to live happily, the jokes can make you happy, So valuations should be calculated according to the value that these products bring to the user.

I'm just a joke, not a standalone station.

Well-known hand (Sina Weibo fans more than 2.5 million)

In the "individual" hand of the circle, we have some of the domestic pieces of independent PC station and app, the impression is not very good, because they integrate our jokes as resources, and even erase our names when using content, and then get paid, like the pure marketing account on Weibo, collect the good content and send it out again. The only thing to do is to integrate and operate.

It's going to hurt our creativity and even create a passion for creative advertising. But then again, the industry's soil is decided, the content is not suitable for original traces. It is not the same as the news, news news can be copyright protection.

Including some foreign sites I also often see, such as ViralNova, the content is really very good-looking, people like it like Sina Weibo, there are good content there is a high flow. But its content also has some platform from Twitter, through its own two times edit and operation.

So I've been doing this for years and never wanted to be a stand-alone product because I thought it would be inevitable to use someone else's content. I prefer to do my own original.

The production of the product itself is very high, some domestic income of tens of millions of dollars. If they get financing, I think it is normal. But the business model of the industry is in urgent need of innovation, the current mode of change is advertising, games, with a very old business model. But I've heard of a recent financing of a reputable investment organization, creating a form of product that is linked to the game.

Iii. Reviews

Copyright vague, not suitable for investment at present

Wu Shichung: Founding partner of Plum Blossom Angel Venture

The first item in today's headline is the meaning of the story, and I think there are now 20-30 people in the team defending the meaning of the joke. Look at other people's embarrassing things, to relieve their psychological pressure, such a demand is widespread.

I've seen all these items, such as "The Encyclopedia of Embarrassing Things", "the meaning of the jokes", the user daily activity is especially big, and the fragmented reading on the handset is very suitable for this kind of entertainment, "The Embarrassing encyclopedia" the mobile End is the PC side to multiply the speed is increasing. In particular, the text content, than the picture is also suitable, because no charge flow.

But it has to be a large user, and the value will be big. This product threshold is still relatively low, copyright blurred, unlike video, video clearly needs to invest money to do copyright.

So involved in investment, VC more cautious, foreign copyright awareness, even the joke will have the concept of copyright protection. I think the "embarrassing encyclopedia" is not too expensive. Of course, this kind of product is a good business, but more suitable for development, the income model is mainly selling ads and games combined transport.

It's hard to make a product in the capital market

WEI: New Media Observer, lecturer of Shanghai Jiaotong University Media and Design Institute, chief strategic consultant of Tian Qi venture capital Fund

I ViralNova such a site is also very puzzled, if the daily update of the jokes or articles so little, why can there be such a high flow? The content of the text is easy to copy and duplicate, the moat is difficult to build, this kind of thing belongs to the creativity, from the angle of capital, the creative industry is worthless: easy to imitate, the high cost of protecting rights, And can't replicate its productivity.

So it's hard to become a sensational thing in the capital market. Including abroad, even if it gets the investment. Foreign financing countless, burning a little bit of the project there are many. Or, like "cold joke picks," financing is valued by marketing companies, how big you are and how many fans there are.

But these projects are no problem, because traffic is really bad, such as "The Encyclopedia", you will feel that the above users are not tired of it. I often brush "embarrassing encyclopedia", it has a mechanism is very interesting, is the user screening mechanism, such as your submission is Zhang to help you audit, and his submission of the jokes and need you and other embarrassing friends to audit. If my review of the passage of the pieces eventually appear on the page, I will be very fulfilling.

It also produced the "Hundred Take away" culture, you see a girl, on the top of the number of embarrassing smile (similar to the top), the girl with you go. It creates a lot of culture and popular words. But I found that the old words will be replaced by new words, I suspect the "embarrassing encyclopedia" users are changing, the original bunch of people left the "embarrassing encyclopedia", or become a reader rather than content contributors, content contributors even become a junior or even middle school students. It also makes it hard to make a lot of money, because it always serves the youngest but the least money generation.

If you want more space, you need to include social things. Like Twitter, the content is light, but it's socially heavy. Sohu Weibo once copied Sina Weibo, the content of Sina sent all synchronized to Sohu, but useless, because the relationship remains in Sina Weibo here.

Also, I think it is a good thing that the "embarrassing encyclopedia" does not use Weibo and micro-letters too much. What happens when Weibo gives you tens of millions of fans? What if the day Weibo, micro-letter no longer fire, how to do? The encyclopedia "has been independent, not dependent on others, so the final flow of traffic from its own web site and the app generated here."

The focus of the product: whether it can be a continuous demand

Erhai: Director and general manager of June Lian Capital

The rapid development of the flow of the application of the story, like today's headlines such as news applications, there are "hundred Miss Sister" so funny, selling Meng. "Today's headlines" meet the very traditional needs of people, "embarrassing encyclopedia" to meet the novelty of the demand.

The key to this type of application is whether it is a continuous requirement. Users really like a Web site or app for a while, but after a while, it's possible that the demand has been replaced or that the user no longer has the demand. I think a lot of jokes on the website have this problem. People may remember the time when the ring tone is popular, the earliest appearance is the funny color ring, such as Xiao Qiang theme. But then it was replaced by music. So, the website is not bad, is how to continue the problem.

The flow of the application of the category is very high, the Internet industry, "Traffic is king" The law is well known. Flow is the basis of all, many large players are first by free to do the flow, and then look for the method of change, Tencent, 360, Baidu is so. Many people also noticed that there are indeed many Web site traffic is very high, but finally did not make a big platform, such as: Tianya, Mop, 51.com, happy and so on.

Therefore, the application of the jokes is very noteworthy, but the key is the persistent problem. Flow is their starting point, I think many of them will be extended or transformed.