"Entrepreneur" magazine: webmaster's past and present life

April 7, 2005, Xiamen, the first Chinese webmaster meeting, after the tour of the size of the Golden Gate cruise ship, a stationmaster proudly said: "If this boat sank, China's Internet industry will be paralyzed "This is not entirely an exaggeration, the webmasters made by more than 100 webmasters are almost all within Alexa's global rankings of 2000, while the total traffic from all Chinese webmasters combined by the most conservative estimates The entire Internet traffic in China 1/3.

Webmasters - China's Internet industry, the most grass-roots group of people, was as if it is an undeniable commercial power. In 2004, Cai Wensheng became the first to take the identity of the owners as venture capital, and after that, more and more owners are standing out, hao123 Li Xingping, 51.com Pangsheng Dong, 58.com Yao Jinbo, and Comsenz Think of Dai Zhikang, etc., to these people as a representative of a group of Internet owners seem suddenly surfaced between the crowd, they have become the flow of Taobao, Baidu, Google scramble for the target, they seem to be suddenly Become a kind of scarce resources, has become extremely important.

Unfortunately, this is just an illusion.

On July 20, 2009, Cai Wensheng, the "king of the webmasters" who initiated the event, said: "The age of personal webmaster ended when I first came to the webmaster's meeting. After saying that there is no webmaster in China, it means it is quite impossible for tens of millions of users to re-establish a website and become famous throughout the country today. "This judgment is undoubtedly brutal and it is a fact to look back.

If the Internet is a sea, then the webmaster is a group of duckweed, although they have a lot of traffic, but mostly by their own interests, interest. They do not have unique technologies, innovative models and powerful resources, which leaves them lacking the ability to grow independently. This means that they must rely on an external business platform, in order to turn traffic into revenue, moving from, to Taobao, Baidu, Google, none. However, for a highly commercialized platform, traffic is only a necessary part of the primitive accumulation period. When the platform is in its own right, the owners' traffic will inevitably devaluate. In the increasingly competitive and increasingly stringent control of the Chinese online world, most of the owners of this group completely unsuited.

On July 15, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) released its "Statistical Report on the 26th Internet Development in China". As of June 2010, the number of websites dropped to 2.79 million (January 2010: 3.23 million ). In other words, in just six months, the total number of Chinese websites has "evaporated" by 440,000. Most of them are made by personal webmasters. Whether subjective or objective, the survival of the fittest has already begun.

In a sense, webmaster has both the essence of China's Internet development, but also fully reflects its bad roots. It is no exaggeration to say that the driving force of millions of webmasters is crucial in the popularization and development of China's Internet. Just as the digital revolution in the United States was driven by generations of Geek.

There are Geek geeks in the United States and webmasters in China. These seemingly two very different subcultures have a huge impact on shaping their own Internet business culture. Geeks are hippies who love freedom, elite intellectual elites, cynical and want to use technology to change the world's computer hero; and webmasters are millions of grassroots in small and medium-sized cities in China, shrewd and alert, eager to change their destiny through personal struggle. They do not resist to create restless points, make holes through the wall to make money. But in the same vein, they are personal heroism and rebel against mainstream values.

So far, the geek culture in the United States has been around for almost 50 years, from the earliest Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Apple II computer developer Steve Wozniac, founder of Viaweb, co-founder of Y Combinator Investments Paul Graham went on to Mark Anderson, Evan Williams and Jerry Yang, and to Zuckerberg today, generations after generation have been given a new connotation of the new term "Geek."

In China, webmaster cultural up to now only ten years, subject to the environment and its own conditions, the previous generation webmaster group has come to the end of decline. But into the mobile Internet era, the same opportunities are everywhere, even more than the desktop Internet 10 years ago, more exciting young people.

In the past two months, Entrepreneur interviewed Dai Zhikang, the founder of Hong Kong-based Creative Commons, Cai Wensheng, founder of CNZZ, Yao Jinbo, founder of 58.com, Du Xueqian, founder of a music network, Zhang Wei, founder of Shenzhen Boyaa, Community director Dong Qinfeng, the blue ideal community owners Zeng Muyang, Jiangsu Xuyang community director Xu Zheng, Hangzhou 19 floor community general manager Lin Yu, k666.com, the Code Web site chief Guoji Jun, Tianjin Belle it female webmaster Cui Yi , Chongqing shopaholic webmasters Takara Sakura more than 10 Internet webmasters or former webmasters. We also met Max Lavin, the technology founder of Paypal, the top geek in the United States, as well as senior Internet watchers such as Xie Wen.

We believe that the era of a grassroots webmaster has ended, but as the 1951 World War II champion MacArthur said in a farewell speech: "The veteran will never die and he will quietly retreat ..."

The new era of webmasters spirit and how to conceive?

The third type of people

The first child dialing station who is willing to do on the Internet, he is often online and offline, he may communicate problems, if you want to form a team, this character will become a short board. - Yao Jinbo

Let's start with the most basic questions, who is the webmaster? What kind of crowd is this?

The term "webmaster" originates from the English word "webmaster", which means "webmaster." Who has translated this partial technical term into a webmaster can not be verified? According to Dai Zhikang's memory, Have this name, and many of them in the future have become the Internet man of the field, such as Ma is the Pony-soft station in Shenzhen, Qiu Bojun Zhuhai West Point stationmaster, Wang Juntao (old rong) is Fuzhou Webmasters, at the time, "Webmaster" is more like a skilled network knight, the virtual world in reality contacts, and today we talk about webmasters, more from the commercial Perspective.

The late 90s of last century, the Internet tide swept across China, represented by Zhang Chaoyang "Western Sea Turtle" has become the tide of this wave of the most dazzling digital heroes. Since the beginning of the new century, local elites such as Ma Huateng, Ma Yun and Chen Tianqiao have risen steadily and continuously to become more mighty beach-goers. The "turtle" and "turtle" are the mainstream faces of the Internet in China. They define the pattern and trend of the Internet in China, But apart from these two types of people, there is a third category of people in the Internet business world in China, and they are individual webmasters.

Whether they are "turtles" or "turtles", they have already proved themselves in the society before they start their own business. They can even say that they belong to the elite class. Ding Lei was born in a telecommunications system. Zhang Chaoyang and Li Yanhong are the United States "turtles" and Chen Tianqiao Once a young high-level state-owned enterprises, Ma Huatian technical director in high-tech companies, Ma is a university teacher. The individual owners are different, they start surfing the Internet, far from the social elite. Such as Li Xingping only junior high school culture, before doing hao123 work is to install computers, Internet cafes; Dai Zhikang University homework failed 15, contempt for college education; Cai Wensheng graduated from high school to do business; sophomore sophomore was dismissed from school; Guo Jijun junior high school Graduated, did fitter, put the stalls; Dong Qinfeng graduated from high school, hit a common job. In simple terms, when many webmasters start to do Internet, they do not meet the success of the mainstream values, or the webmasters themselves do not like or adapt to that value.

Before 2000, it was the embryonic stage of the Internet. Personal webmasters purely based on interest as a starting point, making a simple web page, just to exchange and show good, no income but also full of passion.

Dai Zhikang do Discuz! Just think BBS can make people who do not know each other, do this kind of community software has a great sense of accomplishment; Dong Qinfeng more than 70 articles to find foreign free space Raiders posted, just hope to give novices some help; Color ideal is to give web designers a space for exchange; Xu Zheng in the reality of food and clothing worry-free, to do cumyang community but to meet their hobbies ride network; Guo Jijun more simple, just think the network is free, apply for a free Space to do it, like it, there is no other reason.

From 2000 to 2005, in the early days of the mighty herdsmen, the webmasters alone took advantage of the needs of grassroots users and promoted the application and service of China's Internet. Such as Li Xingping's website navigation station, Huajun's software download station And so on, some webmasters who have traffic started getting a lot of money.

Since 2005, this is a fully commercialized era. Owners of the community began to move to the field of separation, a few owners with the ability to self-evolution began to get venture capital, set up teams to find a profit model.

May 29, 2010, the fifth session of the Internet webmaster, more than 2,500 webmasters flocked to the Great Wall Hotel on the edge of the East Third Ring Road, far beyond the capacity of the venue, even the lobby and outside the hotel are packed The highly anticipated crowd. When the guest speaker Jun Tang, Kai-fu Lee arrived at the scene, have won the idol-star treatment, applause thundered.

This made the Internet senior observer Xie Wen angry. "Many participating webmasters are not entrepreneurs at all. I think they have no place in the real world, but all day dreaming on the Internet, like carnival start-up, is not it strange? Business should be Very lonely, but also a lot to pay, not now how I do not make money, ah, what you make money ah? There are countless people in Silicon Valley did not make money, but he is still a very good entrepreneur, this There is too much awareness. "

"Realization" is a poison?

After 2005, personal stations are getting worse. Although tens of thousands of individual stations have been made, only 5% of them may eventually become commercial stations. Only 1% of them may get venture capital and become bigger and bigger. The rest can only be submerged . - Cai Wensheng

Wang Xiaobo said that life will inevitably lead to vulgarity. The Internet is not the case, the owners of the pure interest of the original state of mind, and soon was the tide of commercial variation.

In November 2000, China Mobile released the "Monternet Business Plan" to welcome the SP (Service Provider) in an open manner. This not only made long-term loss-making portals such as Sina, Sohu and Netease turn a profit, But also directly spawned thousands of different sizes of SP companies, which also gave birth to the sky, Hurray, Palm Link, TOM Online and several other Nasdaq listed companies, but also to the owners also received the first Bucket of gold.

Monternet also opened up the information channel and toll payment channels, of course, the more valuable for the SP, the latter, open payment channels have a more popular name, is on behalf of the charges. Obviously, SP need is massive users, owners of traffic at this time quickly became SP partners. The cooperation mode is very simple. As the front end, the personal website embeds the code and instructions of the SP in the webpage. When users browse the content of their website, they are attracted and registered by SP's SMS, MMS, CRBT, pictures, After that, the two sides split it into 20% to a maximum of 60%.

Since 2001, TOM online and other major SP established their own SMS Union, these Union's website from hundreds to tens of thousands, of which the best personal website may monthly income of 100,000 or more. Du Xueqian said there were a lot of personal webmasters who had tens of thousands of monthly subscriptions. In 2004, he had hundreds of thousands of personal incomes. Many people think therefore, from 2003 to 2006, is the golden age of personal website. Yao Jinbo said: "If you want to vote for a contribution to the individual webmasters maximum award, then non-China Mobile is none other than."

However, China Mobile will be billing and purchasing power to the SP, bundling and trickery has become the conventional means of the SP, many services without the user to be directly debit and credit, resulting in a significant negative effect, with the move The rectification started in 2006, the rapid decline of the entire SP industry, for SP owners divided into the main income, the good times will come to an end, a large number of webmasters disappear.

In addition to SMS Union, owners of another major source of income is the Baidu Union, Taobao Alliance and other advertising alliances, but in essence, this is not much difference with the SMS Union, are traffic in the traffic. Baidu, Taobao and other platform-based sites need to accumulate users in the early stages, Baidu need to resist Google, Taobao need to resist eBay, they are willing to take out the real money to buy the hands of webmasters traffic, but when they beat the main competitors, After a huge amount of traffic itself, the webmasters are relegated to a disadvantaged group and do not have much voice. A typical example is that in 2009, when Google announced its withdrawal from China, Baidu Union advertised to webmasters Into the ratio was immediately reduced.

But the owners can not do without this alliance, because their single site after all, limited the flow of traffic, there is no scale advantage, unable to obtain advertisers, only through such alliances together to have advertising value, which is why webmasters Baidu is always love and hate. The survey data from DCCI and Hong Sing Venture Capital dramatically illustrate this ambivalence: in the coming year, 34.9% of personal webmasters intend to join the Baidu Union while 34.6% of webmasters think Baidu is a threat to the future development of small and medium websites Internet enemies.

Innate defects

What a lot of people do is neither unique nor competitive threshold, playing the sidelines, coaxing, illegal, just like illegal buildings in the city. Illegal buildings also have the right to survive, but on the whole it is not lawful. I have not heard of an illegal building that turns into a skyscraper. - Xie Wen

The fate of the owners actually in 2005 has been decided.

Since then, the world has been completely different, Tencent, Baidu has been listed, the giants began to lose ground in the market, more business models have the capital to support the commercial website began to rise. At the same time, with the Internet becoming more and more mainstream, the government's supervision of the Internet has also been gradually strengthened, and the industry's threshold is on the rise.

Although solitary owners have many advantages, but the greater the go, the more the disadvantages exposed by this group is greater than its advantages:

1. narrow field of vision, short-sighted

"Chinese webmasters are all grassroots, many of them have not graduated from high school, in a small place, made a website, but there are many users, Li Xingping is the representative." Yao Jinbo said. Indeed, Li Xingping is more suitable than the "King of Webmasters" Cai Wensheng and "Community Leader" Dai Zhikang if it is not necessary to select a specimen of a Chinese webmaster.

Li Xingping almost intuitively made a hao123, but in the long run, there is no sustained value of the site navigation station, which is a typical example, the owners can make to meet the needs of grassroots users, simple and direct, but this application Usually not much room for growth. Li Xingping frankly stated when he sold the hao123 that he "can not see the future of hao123," said Du Xueqian. "The webmaster's observation of the industry is a very small one," or more sharply, the webmaster's vision Generally narrow.

The early personal website is nothing less than fiction, music, pictures, downloads and a few simple applications, no one has considered the issue of copyright, just the contents of these almost do not need to simply pile up the cost, and in order to obtain users, traffic is easy, Traffic flow to the money is also easy, most webmasters will not consider the future development of the road, which is doomed to the majority of webmasters did not evolve.

2. used to go it alone, no team

Many owners have not been managed, it will not manage others, only manage themselves, are not used to team operations, more alone. In the brutal period of Internet development, commercial websites are not powerful yet. Individual webmasters can gain many users by virtue of their momentary initiative. However, most of them can not survive for a long time. When commercial websites start to develop and competition intensifies, The regular army, there is no resistance.

3. Low-tech, non-innovative models

Most owners have the basic technology, but often confined to the production of web pages and management servers, and the lack of resources and funds to find a better technical staff, which makes many webmasters can only use common procedures to set up websites, can not be based on their needs To develop.

Moreover, webmasters often lack of sensitivity in the business, what is popular, what to do hot, hao123 popular, there countless web navigation stations, and constantly broken down, but its value is minimal. In simple terms, webmasters have a good ability to imitate, but do not have the ability to innovate in learning, in fact, this is also a common problem throughout the Chinese Internet.

4 non-standard operation, mindset impetuous

In the era when traffic is king, cheating is almost a compulsory course for all webmasters. Webmasters are naturally sensitive to traffic. For example, in the early days of the 3721, they would buy popular Web site keywords and direct them to their websites, The website does not actually have any relationship with the keyword. Professional cheating program is not uncommon, through fake click fraud advertising is only commonplace, obviously, this is a way to get rid of chicken.

Gao Chunhui, the oldest Chinese webmaster, believes that more than 99% of the webmasters participating in the first webmasters' meeting are profitable, but webmasters may be 50% -70% less likely to cheat if they do not cheat. In the meantime a small detail is that a new webmaster asked the old webmaster, how can we cheat better? In did not get a satisfactory answer, the new webmaster almost turned away and say hello too lazy to hit one, the old webmaster lamented: "Here, I see more impetuous, are the dream to step by step. "

Xie Wen pointed out sharply that the role of personal webmasters in China's Internet has two aspects: "The positive aspect is that Gosha becomes a tower, turning fragmented traffic into a visible basis for commercial operation and popularizing the basic operation knowledge of the Internet. However, another To a large extent, this is also a gray industrial chain, where rampant business operations such as rogue traffic and edge balling are prevalent and are gone.

How's your business card changed?

In the past nine years, when everyone was at a loss what to do was first. At that time, more courage and acumen were used. Almost everyone now takes good care. More needs are wisdom and needs Depth, comprehensive technological innovation. - Xie Wen

As the head of China's largest community platform software provider, Dai Zhikang can be described as a super webmaster, every day he and the owners of large and small deal. He found that a few years ago many webmasters held a sheet of paper with the name, phone number on the paper, but now, when changing business cards with everyone, they find that everyone is the CEO of the company. This is an interesting phenomenon, in fact, in addition to owners of this circle, almost all of the owners no longer call themselves owners.

Twenty years ago, people called those who escaped from the organs and units to do small business, and Dai Zhikang remembered that when he was a child, the father of a college teacher introduced the former colleague by using the word. From his impression, "that person's head As if engraved with the word "sea". This is obviously the traditional value system to impose a different type of mark, and today, outside the circle, the "webmaster" the word is also like an unpleasant label, so that webmasters unacceptable.

Cui Yi has a rare high degree of education in the webmasters. She is a Ph.D. in biology from Nankai University. Her parents hope she can study abroad. In the summer of 2006, she made a female community himself, became a webmaster and gave up The way to learn. Choi's business card reads "Tianjin Belle female network CEO", if you see the advertisers, she will offer another business card, the above title is "Chief Operating Officer," Why use a different business card? "Although I am the owner, webmaster and CEO of a website, I have a mid-range position on the business card that enhances the image of the entire team's website brand," she said. Compared with those old webmasters, Cui Yi had a clear business plan at the beginning of business.

"In your circle you introduced me as a webmaster, I feel very happy, because I am one of you, in this category I use this term is a respectable title, but outsiders often say there is a ridicule Taste, I do not want to explain what is the webmaster with others. "Xu Zheng said.

Although Xu Zheng is responsible for the community network and cumyang, but his business card is also written as "director of operations", he still somewhat traces of literary youth, in fact, he embarked on the road to commercialization is absolutely compelling. According to his personality, he would rather be a smart moderator on the Internet, just as his id "Nomadic."

Jiyang community network is not a well-known website, but it has more than 300,000 registered members, the total post volume of more than 50 million, the Japanese posting volume of 50,000, the PV value of more than 1 million times, apparently such a site has been Has a considerable commercial value, but Xu Zheng and his partner Der Spiegel never made money through the site plan, because both of them have a good job, live comfortably.

In 2006, an ad agency was set up by a friend of the two of them. However, there were not many businesses. Xu Zheng opened a few advertising spots on the website and entrusted the friend to take half of the advertising revenue out of trust. Neither party even signed the contract. By 2007, this friend put forward the hope of paying the website's advertising agency rights at a cost of 100,000 yuan per year. Xu Zheng and Der Spiegel had no hope of making money. They felt that such a steady annual income was not bad. They agreed and signed A formal contract.

However, Xu Zheng never know how much the site advertising sales, the friend later proposed, hoping to own the site's shares, he is responsible for business, Xu Zheng and the mirror once again agreed, but they hope that friends invested some money, After all, the two of them have been doing this website for nearly 10 years, but the friend did not agree and the result was displeasing. Xu Zheng had no choice but to do business himself.

"When we turn to the business like those personal webmasters, in fact, very suited to the Internet in the past are very respected people, or very pure, and can even be said to be the kind of human fireworks that feeling; before the Internet It is hard for me to chase after you but now I have to run my own business. Even I have a fear. "

Fortunately, after six months of acclimatization, Xu Zheng found that this process was not as difficult as it had imagined. In the first half of this year, there were almost half a million to six hundred thousand of his income. "I found that commercialization did not undermine our principle , Users, businesses and themselves all can be happy, I think this sense of accomplishment is even greater. "Next, Xu Zheng plans to conduct a thorough commercial network of Ciyang.

Like Cui Yi and Xu Zheng, many webmasters started to set up teams. They deliberately played down their masters status in the business world, abandoning their own efforts and starting to formalize the operation of a company.

Webmaster 2.0

Now there is a huge opportunity, that is, mobile Internet, there will be more and different owners appear. Mobile Internet will appear three opportunities, the first is the component, and now in fact the best personal webmaster are doing components; the second is to do the application directly on the phone; there is a microblogging. - Cai Wensheng

Guo Jijun is a webmaster Mad Men, like to participate in a variety of webmasters. In June 2010, at the Hunan Webmasters General Assembly, he found that fewer than 10% of the webmasters had participated in the first webmasters in 2005 and "most webmasters disappeared." But the new webmaster era will come.

Xie Wen will be a new generation of owners divided into three categories:

The first category may be with universal website software provided by the Hong Sing, with independent domain names, rely on traffic or with e-commerce, earn some revenue, which may account for about 70%.

The second category is for Facebook, Apple and other large platforms to do third-party applications, they do not want to fight the world alone, but a larger part of the industrial chain, accounting for about 20%.

The third category is entrepreneurs, this type of independent company, exploring the business model, looking for venture capital, to expand, this part may account for less than 10%.

One in the industry made it clear that Kennedy's Kang Sheng-creators will be Tencent acquisition. This means that China's largest community software platform will be dominated by the strongest Internet companies in China. Although many webmasters lament that CommScope is being entertained, but aside from the emotional factors, from a rational business logic, this Not necessarily not a good ending.

The status quo of China's Internet is that Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba three top three, Baidu alone dominance, e-commerce Ali Taobao dominance, while Tencent overall strength of the strongest, but relatively closed, its search and pat is also weak , If Kang Sheng into the bag, you can get 70% of the community platform, its traffic and users for search and patting apparently has great value. For advertisers and e-commerce as the main source of revenue for webmasters, search and patting stronger, but also means that the market has the power to check and balance Baidu and Taobao, or that Tencent can be more effective than the Hong Sing To honor the value of the owners, of course, the premise is that Tencent must be open.

No longer Tencent acquisition of Comstar as a personal webmaster era more appropriate end of the logo, and if this platform for personal webmaster to serve a larger platform, then this big platform will be the future webmaster - Or that it is a very important space for the survival and development of individual entrepreneurs in the mobile Internet era.

In essence, the relationship between small and medium websites and large-scale platform type website has not changed much. Small sites to provide value for large sites, large sites through the open interface for small sites to provide means of realization - the search box, and even hyperlinked is not an initial form of an open interface?

The initial small site provides only the value of disorderly traffic, but now it can become an accurate conversion of e-commerce users, stick to the user's third-party applications, apparently its technical content is getting higher, but for owners - or More precisely, the requirements of Internet entrepreneurs - are also getting higher, webmasters traffic is traffic, the new era is the competition technology, operations, creativity, in a sense, this is the evolution of grassroots webmasters path of.

Li Xingping is still the best specimen, in 2004, he will sell millions of hao123 to 12 million yuan price sold to Baidu, and later started with Cai Wensheng game site 4399, both think this will be a new future opportunity. Li Xingping himself is more introverted and was once a fan of solipsism. However, he possesses a good learning ability and is the best partner with Cai Wensheng. One person is responsible for product and operation, one is responsible for strategy, financing, foreign cooperation and team building, The manned combat mode. Now 4399 is already the largest web game platform in China. Obviously, if Li Xingping insist on doing web site, there will certainly be no success on the 4399.