Who will be the ultimate winner of the video site

The intermediary transaction SEO diagnoses Taobao guest stationmaster buys the Cloud host technology Hall

In less than June, the bustling cars on the streets of Beijing have rolled up the windows and turned on the air conditioner. Perhaps in hot weather to discuss "winter" some outdated, from a year ago began rumors "video web site Cold winter" did not come. Of course, late winter is not necessarily a good thing, and the storm that accumulates longer is often more brutal. After all, for most people, more than 200 of the domestic video-type sites are indeed too many.

This April, Jiangxi Wuyuan, a tea company Mister through the network video, will brew after tea to the customer show. Many investors began to tap the domestic video site contains huge business opportunities. Figure/CFP

Video site operators say history is always strikingly similar. In those days when the three major portals were born, users faced the same variety of choices, and eventually someone made Wang Tu Br.

VCs pouring into video sites

As early as 3 years ago, the media tycoon on the other side of the ocean spent 560 million of billions of dollars on the United States of MySpace to nationalize, although so far the myspace still does not make money, but only "to move News Corp content resources to the network platform" This is enough to be exciting.

This excitement has largely stimulated investors, who have even started to go crazy since 2005.

Last year, Google spent nearly 1.7 billion dollars to buy YouTube, which investors envy. "If a network company can overtake Google in the next few years, the company will certainly appear in Peer-to-peer (peertopeer English abbreviations, referring to" peer-to-peer or Peer-to-peer Networks ") in the online video field. "The world renowned Internet investment Godfather, SoftBank International Risk fund President Son said, then he put a tens of millions of dollars in venture capital into China." After him, Sequoia, Carlyle, SIG, DCM and other international top VC also have to do. In China alone, the video industry has gained more than 100 million dollars in venture capital, according to publicly disclosed news.

When does internet TV show up?

"Just like the difference between newspaper and TV, users actually have different forms of information acquisition requirements." The internet itself has very strong media characteristics, the Web1.0 form of plain text and pictures in the future will not be able to cover all the user's information acquisition needs. For example, the great success of Sina, now the status of the Internet is like the "People's daily", then there should be a future on the Internet CCTV? This year in the march of a well-known domestic network company senior in an interview asked reporters questions.

So, a question arises: will there be internet TV stations on the internet in China? In this new technology-driven multimedia era, where does the technical application of network video go?

Video network wants to build new "media empire"

From the moment the commercial Internet was born in China, internet companies were branded as the media industry. Although the first to help the Chinese internet to escape the pressure of survival is mobile text messages, although to help CEOs top of the rich list is the Internet games and search engines, although Sina in the above several aspects are not so good, but this does not affect its in the Chinese Internet domain "one brother" status.

Sina has helped to achieve network journalism, is the Internet to see the news "New user Experience", now another "new experience" is becoming the biggest incentive to subvert the Sina era. The owners of video sites advocating this view believe that, just as words and pictures meet the most basic information acquisition needs, the new user experience brought by multimedia-style video information will likely result in a new media empire. Although it is still in its infancy, limited by the cost of information processing, more video-type sites can only be a user-made content to attract attention, but everyone admits that this will not be the final form of online video, especially 3-5 years after the "Broadband Era" network video is not so.

In fact, domestic and foreign video site operators are very clear, simply rely on users to upload content is not a big deal. "A domestic video sharing site boss to reporters, relying on their own content and share can bring popularity, in the start-up period to compress costs, can complete the initial promotion of the brand, but it is difficult to become a healthy business model of the foundation." Now video-type sites repeat more than 80% video content, can not rely on content to form the core competitiveness, for advertisers such a platform is also completely untrustworthy. "Sina, Sohu increase video input

Sina CEO Cao Chao believes that the existing more than 200 video sites must eventually "only the first group can survive." But the problem is that everyone has no doubt that they are one of the first group worthy members, even Sina, Sohu is no exception.

In the case of Charles Chao, who graduated from Fudan News, the Chinese Internet has only two modes, one is to sell free content and the other is to allow users to pay for content. The latter kind of Sina is obviously not good at, so Chao has been trying to make the former model more thorough. At present, the biggest "internet newspaper" has been unable to meet Chao's needs, he would like to become a network media group Sina.

"In addition to providing users with video content of the podcast channel, Sina also through content purchase and original way to run their own wide frequency channel and television channels." Chao said that in the future, these forms of video content services will also be thoroughly opened up, and even evolved into a new platform, and have an independent advertising sales team and partners.

Another big portal Sohu is also strengthening the video of this business. "Sohu's Peer-to-peer technology is the most advanced in the industry. Sohu CEO Charles Zhang said that now these technologies have been extended to Sohu Entertainment, sports and other channels.

Despite repeated emphasis on the importance of "technology", Zhang also has to admit that "network video" has not entered a real sense of competition in the era. Zhang is proud of the Sohu Entertainment broadcast and other original multimedia video content, the entire content of the Sohu platform on the proportion of the small poor.

Video Web market maturity takes time

Copyright, prohibited content, business model ... It can not be denied that no matter how good the future is planned, the real problem is always in sight. Just as Google has had to pay more than 200 million dollars for its own $1.7 billion worth of YouTube, the future of "network TV" also has too many problems to face. In addition, one of the biggest potential risks is how long it will take for the market to mature.

"Now almost all the video sites, still take technology as their core competitiveness, but also to the Internet users to sell their own live in the end how stable, how fast." "This is not the game of the media industry," said Cheng Tianyu, TechWeb vice president of the well-known it community. The user can not because of Hunan TV signal to watch its program, the key is whether the content is wonderful. Similar situation is also seen in Sina and other portals or other "non-professional video site", even pplive, PPStream and other clients to promote professional network video site.

"Just like when we did the portal site, the beginning is also a lot of sites appear, the last only three." "After a few years, even without such a long time, the site that provides video content will enter a highly concentrated oligopoly era," said Koo, a former CEO of Sohu. ”

New trends

Sina recruit "TV host"

In Thursday, Chao on behalf of Sina signed the contract, to determine the strategic partnership between Sina and China Telecom, the two sides will jointly operate the joint "Sina-Internet Star" podcast channel.

Although Chao openly admits that the move is largely due to "bandwidth cost considerations", the fact that Sina's layout of video content is far more complex than a piece of paper.

The cost of bandwidth per quarter or so is not what Chao is really concerned about.

In early May, Sina on the homepage of the "recruitment information" quietly added "TV presenter" position. In the description Sina wrote: "Have a professional or television work experience is preferred."

"Do you have the right person to recommend it?" "In Wednesday, far away from foreign Chen reply to a reporter's message, said," Back to Beijing to talk to you.

A few weeks ago, Chen on Sina and Chengdu Media Group signed a joint conference, said Sina has been looking for with more dominant content resources of traditional media cooperation. In Chen's view, as with newspapers, magazines, periodicals, television stations can do by virtue of advertising business, the two-dimensional text and pictures have gradually failed to meet the full needs of the Internet media, and even Sina's traditional "latest and fastest" also has been unable to fully meet the state of information hungry Chinese netizens.

Prospects

The first signs of video advertising

Advertisers are already starting to move on the land of web video.

Intel and AMD have become one of the first players in the field, and their choice of entry point is gaming and electronic athletics.

In this relatively "professional" field, there have been several professional-level "online TV stations", such as Gamestv.com and PLU gaming platform. They provide most of the video programs are original content, in two years or so after the operation, these sites not only to cultivate a number of highly popular network television host, but also in the advertising business has begun to get better. Canon, Lenovo, Asus and other IT companies to become the second batch of people, and after them, eagle, Red Bull, Coca-Cola and other FMCG brands also began to increase the scope of the field, even the FAW Mazda also began a small test.

"Compared with the internet in the United States, advertisers in the network video advertising investment in the proportion is about 15%, and the search for advertising is about 50%." "I look forward to the traditional Internet ad more, or to the video ads expect more, it is difficult to answer." "At present, in the world of Internet, Sina's" Network plus media "mode is unique.

Yahoo or Google, they are more like a network company than a media. 2006 Broadband market size of 20.3 billion U.S. dollars, the growth rate of 70.6%, is expected to 2007 such growth will be again high. However, in China, the broadband market in 2005 only 10 million U.S. dollars, 2006 is only 60 million U.S. dollars, optimistic estimate of 2007 will reach 160 million U.S. dollars, 2008, but 240 million dollars.

"There is an infinite imagination space, there are infinite business risks." "Cheng Tianyu said that, especially in the 3G and PC Internet expansion of the Chinese market, everyone knows that network TV is worth a try, but no one dares to invest too much, because the time cost of this area is too expensive."

This edition of the interview/newspaper reporter Peng