The commercial anxiety of Sina Weibo: the failure of the precarious

July 13, the reporter learned from Sina, Sina Weibo new advertising form is about to launch, but the outside world is not clear about its specific appearance. This is the next April, Sina Weibo announced advertising platform, its new exploration in advertising mode. In the past two years, with Weibo, Sina, the veteran Internet company, has soared to about 130 dollars. However, as if sitting on a "roller coaster", Sina now back to the difficult point, the share price fell to two years ago level, fell to more than 40 U.S. dollars. But, unlike two years ago, Sina was anxious to explore the next generation of strategic products. Today, Sina is puzzled, it found a trend in line with the internet trends "SNS" (social network) concept products, but the huge flow is still such as a difficult to reclaim the "gold mine", just standing there quietly. Sina, the time to have to worry. Sina forecasts that, in 2012, Sina will also invest 160 million U.S. dollars for micro-blog. In 2011, Sina has smashed 110 million-120 million dollars into Weibo. In the Sina Weibo cost structure, in addition to marketing expenses, most of them are fixed costs. As the number of users continues to grow, Sina is also constantly adding infrastructure, network equipment and other inputs. If Sina's commercialization process continues to slow, its cash flow will gradually tighten. And, with the number of new users on Sina Weibo slowing, the popularity of Sina Weibo is cooling as 20 million of new subscribers a month dropped to around 10 million in the same period last year. So, Sina must really start to act. "In fact, Sina Weibo has a huge potential for commercial value." According to the existing third party Weibo ' large ' one year billion of advertising revenue to calculate, Sina Weibo if you can make use of its own platform, at least a year to get billions of yuan of advertising revenue. July 13, Wave Gold rush CEO Zhou told reporters. However, just because Sina will put too heavy expectations on micro-blog, it is wary of commercialization of microblogging, as if to treat a "golden egg hen", dare not easily touch, persecuted it. This April, Sina Weibo launched a full-scale commercialization. However, the outside world to see, up to now, Sina Weibo advertising platform is still based on the display of brand advertising, data mining based on the effect of advertising, still long to shoulder. The controversy over user fees to test water opens Sina Weibo, a series of subtle changes that can be found both on the PC side and on the mobile side. On the PC side of Sina Weibo, users see that in the last few months, Sina Weibo has quietly added some new keys to the top right corner, including "open" and "private" choices, feature Buttons "expand" and "Pick up" options, and so on. The most obvious change, of course, is the push of a series of ads on top, bottom, and right of the page. If you log on to Sina Weibo at the mobile end, you can see that there are about five or six display advertisements taking turns in the eyes at the top. In addition, in the "Find Friends" and other columns, Sina Weibo secretly joined the "shake" and other functional settings. Clearly, Sina Weibo has begun to target "users", "advertisers" at both ends. Although, there is still Tencent micro-blog, Sohu Weibo "eyeing", but Sina has no hesitation. But Sina does not seem to have a clear answer as to how the commercialization of microblogs should be done. Sina insiders told reporters, "Everyone is talking about Sina Weibo ads, in fact, its logic is easy to understand, is according to B (merchant) and to C (personal) two parts to try." To B is for advertisers to explore the value of advertising, to C is through functional improvement, further enhance user activity, and even charges to users. The two are both parted and one with each other. "In the personal sector, Sina Weibo is trying to charge users, including micro-game fees." Among them, the most strong response is: This June 18, Sina Weibo announced that the launch of the "Sina Weibo membership System", the opening of members need to pay a monthly fee of 10 yuan. The news, "startled the waves", the sound of criticism. Anwar Media president Guo that "Sina Weibo has accumulated a huge flow base, the main problem now is how to cash flow." At present, Sina for personal front-end, targeted at the back end of advertisers are doing. However, front-end charges are unsustainable and do not generate large revenue. The main revenue of Sina Weibo's future remains mainly to catch advertisers ' back-end charges. "From this perspective, how to enhance the user's stickiness on the personal side, activate the user activity, thereby bringing advertising sales, this may be the media, the light social Sina to consider the most important." According to statistics, as of May 16, Sina Weibo registered users have grown to 324 million, the daily rate of active users over 9%. However, the number of new users on Sina Weibo has slowed, adding 10 million users a month. If Sina Weibo can enliven the user activity, according to the new active user 5% per month, the monthly increase of about 15 million users. Insiders told reporters, "If the existing users can be invigorated, then, its advertising value will be fully tapped." "Gold in the value of advertisers" last May, Sina CEO Charles Chao spoke about six possible business models of Sina Weibo: interactive precision advertising, social gaming, real-time search, wireless value-added services, e-commerce platforms, and digital content charges. Today, Sina Weibo has been clearly focused, focusing mainly on advertising. Even in the last two years, it has been found that social networks are the easiest gaming area for money, and Sina finds it unsuitable for its own business model. Sina platform and Tencent and other traditional game platform is different, the user groups are different. Sina Platform's user age is big, although the education level, the income is higher, but, the user pays the intention not to be strong, the game stickiness is also not high. Sina Weibo launched its gaming platform last year, but most services are free and Sina does not share revenue with game developers. It is expected that by the second half of this year, Sina Weibo's gaming platform will start charging, and the previous income scale is limited. From foreign experience, social networking sites contain huge advertising business value. Sina by this reference also will aim at precision advertising field.But from a traditional portal advertisement eldest brother to the mobile internet advertising era leader, Sina has its own advantages, but also has obvious constraints. On the one hand, Sina has accumulated a good base of advertisers, but on the other hand, in the social marketing era of "effect billing", Sina still needs too much time and effort to dig and grope, and one of the important things is to include data mining. Earlier in the country to engage in data mining, vice president of dual technology to tell reporters, "Data mining premise is the need for a long period of user accumulation, long-term record of the user's social attributes, behavior rules and interactive characteristics and other elements." On this basis, in-depth analysis and exploration of effective advertising channels and models. "The reporter learned from inside Sina that it is actively through the social interest Atlas to recommend the brand content to potential users, using ads corresponding to the application page to attract fan interaction, inspire users to share the creation of Word-of-mouth effect." In addition, to promote the commercialization process, Sina Weibo is establishing and perfecting the micro-blogging infrastructure, such as micro-credit system, micro-bo payment system, micro-BO data mining system. In the fourth quarter of this year, Sina also plans to launch a self-service advertising system that serves small and medium-sized enterprises and individual users. In the near future, Sina Weibo has also launched a commercial open platform, providing support for developers at the technical and interface levels, creating the App Store for service companies and building a benefit-sharing mechanism. However, Sina still tends to be conservative, has been watching the changes and dynamics of the outside world. "Facebook is trying to launch the" sponsor "advertising form on the left side of the page, which translates to 100 times times higher than the original advertising format, Zhou said. But before Facebook's big promotion in the fourth quarter of this year, Sina may also learn in a cautious way, without major changes and breakthroughs. "The second half of this year is the key period for Sina's commercialization. But there is a "cautious optimism" about the commercialization of Sina Weibo. At present, the big investment banks to Sina's valuation appraisal dispute is also very big. July 12, HSBC Securities will be the initial rating of Sina stock "overweight", the target price set at 62 U.S. dollars. Research firm Maxim The Sina target price from 45 US dollars to $44 and reiterated its "sell" rating. And from Sina Weibo own development angle, also faced with many difficulties. Social media advertising is still a new form at home. On the one hand, Sina needs to spend more time and energy to educate the market, on the other hand, Sina's commercial timetable has been constantly urging it to accelerate the work, no longer delay. In the past, Sina's advertisers mainly to large advertisers, the main model for sales agent. and into the micro-Bo era, Sina needs to be more focused on large and medium-sized advertisers, to distinguish the past marketing efforts, and in the latter part of the data analysis, such as providing tracking services, Sina's staffing also poses a new challenge. Reporter from a number of third-party advertising agencies to understand, relatively speaking, the domestic large internet companies, Sina's postTaiwan's technical capabilities are relatively weak, micro-blog customers and the complexity of the data analysis of differences need to spend more time and energy to explore. At the same time, because the social media advertising is relatively new field, the domestic professional talent is relatively scarce. Insiders and reporters said, "There has been a United States and Facebook advertising Chinese founder to return to discuss cooperation with Sina Weibo, but found that its background technology is still relatively backward, it is difficult to directly through." "Zhou told reporters," At present, Wall Street investment in the new advertising form of the "News feed" (information flow) is still a lot of confusion, domestic, there are fewer people to study it. "In addition, it is worth mentioning that, in 2012, as China's macroeconomic slowdown, Sina from the portal ads to micro-blog advertising may encounter new challenges and shocks." There is still a lot of uncertainty about whether Sina can jump from scratch. If successful, Sina will undoubtedly lead the mobile internet advertising trend of the new leader, brilliant no less than even beyond the 2000 internet bubble after the portal site ads. If it fails, it will be in jeopardy, or it will quit the internet in the first camp.