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What I fear most is that it has not been "closed" yet, but it has become a memory in people's minds.
Author: Yang Jie
Recently, the news of "Tianya Forum is closed" hit the hot search. According to the news, all sections of Tianya Forum were frozen at 18:00 on November 22. Many people have begun to appreciate their youth and have written a "farewell declaration" for Tianya.
After the closure of Xici Hutong, Tiexue Forum and other websites, the first batch of young people in China who hit the Internet have been unsurprisingly surprised that Tianya has withdrawn from the stage of history. The forum representing the previous era will always say goodbye in the new era, just waiting for an official announcement.
But on the contrary, on December 2, Tianya Community officially issued a statement denying this rumor, saying that Tianya Community Platform is now in normal condition. The freezing of the plate at that time was due to a network failure, which was repaired by the technical team and returned to normal at 18:00 on November 25. During the failure, Tianya Community also issued a notice on Sina's official microblog.
Although the official rumor was refuted and the website returned to normal, the decline of Tianya Community cannot be denied. The news of "Tianya is closed" will come every once in a while.
This declining online forum can maintain such attention precisely because of its past glory.
Tianya Forum, which was founded in March 1999, was the first comprehensive forum to set up such columns as stocks, gossip, computer technology, emotional world, essays, news reviews, sports focus, Tianya Mutual Aid, etc. The unique positioning makes Tianya have great influence. According to its official introduction, there are more than 130 million registered users and more than 250 million monthly users.
At that time, Tianya was one of the symbols of China's Internet, which also gave birth to a large number of "Internet celebrities" and opinion leaders, as well as many classic stems that have been circulated on the Internet. Many people become angry from Tianya, but Tianya fails to find its own role. It was listed on the NEEQ, but was suspended and delisted due to qualification problems shortly afterwards. After 2007, Tianya Forum began to decline. It was even rumored that it would be sold for a while, and it has survived to this day.
Sometimes, once Tianya people wandered everywhere, and Tianya really became the "Tianya" that was going farther and farther.
01
Once standing at the peak of the times, but now abandoned
1999 was a magical year. That year, Jack Ma founded Alibaba; In that year, Zhang Chaoyang, Sohu, was listed on the Hurun Rich List, and he was high spirited; That year, Liu Qiangdong made VCDs with dreams; That year, Robin Li returned to Beijing from Silicon Valley and founded Baidu. It was also in that year that Xing Ming, the founder of Tianya, and his two partners started their business.
"In 1999, when China's Internet industry was spreading and growing, Xing Ming, who got the first bucket of gold from the stock market, made three investment projects, Hainan Online, Hainan Tourism Network, and Tianya Community, and planted his entrepreneurial dream." In the book "Boiling for 15 years", Xing Ming wrote that in his vision, Hainan Online did a regional portal access model; Hainan Tourism Network is aimed at Hainan's huge tourism market, while Tianya is not so commercial. At first, Xing Ming just made a stock forum based on his personal interests.
Unexpectedly, the seeds planted unintentionally at the beginning, instead, they are green trees. When Tianya Forum was launched, it launched columns such as Emotional World, Art and Essay. At that time, when Stone and Huayuan merged and renamed Sina, some old netizens left in succession, some of them came to Tianya Forum. Some elites are also among them. Tianya had a good start.
This open and personality publicizing place has gradually gained its reputation, with numerous high-quality posts of entertainment gossip, and the saying that "talents have emerged from the second floor since ancient times" has emerged. Tianya also gathered a group of celebrities, such as Mingyue, Murong Xuecun, Tianxia Bachang, and Sister Furong.
Some important nodes can be seen from the prosperity of Tianya Community at that time: in 2004, Sina and Sohu wanted to acquire Tianya, but Tianya Community refused to merge and only accepted shares, and the two sides broke up in discord; In 2005, the concept of blog and WEB 2.0 rose. Tianya followed up and made Tianya blog, which was invested by IDG and Zero2IPO; In 2006, Tianya was jointly invested by Lenovo, Google and Jiangnanchun.
With a large amount of funds and Google's traffic support, Tianya has entered a period of rapid development, and a large number of users have poured in.
In 2015, Tianya landed on the NEEQ, but its products continued to decline due to no breakthrough. In April 2019, Tianya, which had been suspended for more than two years, was officially delisted. Later, it was removed from the shelves of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology due to illegal collection of user personal information.
Now, when searching Tianya, most of the information that pops up is the company's newly added multiple executed information. The founders are restricted to high consumption, and the total executed amount of the company reaches 139 million yuan.
02
What did Tianya miss?
"An era has come to an end. I was responsible for several famous posts in those years. Since the tribal revision, it has been doomed to decline. A group of passionate and loving people have left, with very low wages, almost no benefits, and family businesses with high vision and low skill." Under the news related to Tianya, some netizens commented so. How did Tianya get here?
A large number of new users poured in, and the quality was mixed, which damaged the atmosphere of the original community and hurt the old users, especially the elite users. In addition, the most fundamental reason for the loneliness of Tianya is the end of the forum era. After Tianya reached its peak, the Internet has changed its appearance and users have changed their positions.
▲ Today's Tianya Forum
As a large number of users were diverted by blogs, microblogs and WeChat, Tianya lost 31.613 million yuan and 44.6582 million yuan respectively in 2013 and 2014.
First, the core user base has lost and the content quality has declined. During the peak period, a large number of users poured in, and the user levels were mixed, and some old users left. In people's minds, the end of the world has become meaningless irrigation and endless scolding. This situation is not unique.
Second, Google stopped its technical and operational support for "Tianya Come" and "Tianya Know" in the second half of 2010, which means that Tianya not only needs to buy back its shares, but also lost its largest traffic portal.
Third, compared with the forum, there are more diversified forms, such as blog. Why not cultivate your own blog instead of sinking in the forum? In addition, Baidu Tieba, Douban and Sina Weibo have also become optional platforms for users, making them more attractive.
Fourth, Tianya attaches more importance to humanities than commerce, and misses the capital outlet. From its inception, Tianya has a strong founder gene. "Tianya Feeling" is what Xing Ming thinks is the company's core competitiveness. "It's hard to say clearly. If you understand our basic community law, you may understand Tianya's temperament." In Tianya, people are valued more than business. This not only made them miss the capital outlet several times, but also failed to keep pace with the times in terms of user experience. Even if it changes, even if it just changes the page color, adjusts the font, or simply sorts the functions, some "conservative" netizens will complain.
Carrying too heavy a burden, a beautiful product has finally become "four unlike".
One case is that Tianya used to have a very detailed classification of its sections. From the main section to the vertical sections such as entertainment gossip and technology, the more detailed the section, the more focused the user population. Around 2006, Tianya Community had "classified information" in Hainan and other cities, where users can publish rental, job hunting, second-hand goods trading, etc. The classified information as a separate section is very easy to copy, and the management cost will be much lower.
"Classification" implies commercial value. Looking back, there are 58 leasing information, and there are idle fish in second-hand product trading. Each segment means unlimited commercial value, but Tianya failed to grasp it. According to the data, Xing Ming, the largest product manager of Tianya, felt that such exploration was incompatible with Tianya's temperament and rejected it.
Since then, although Tianya hopes to turn itself into the protagonist of the story through various operations, it has never found its own revenue model. Its latest business development is the issuance of its own token "Tianya Diamond" in March. When Tianya no longer received public attention, it issued IP tokens, which was regarded as a "rubbing" blockchain hot company by the outside world. It was a bit stubborn, a bit wayward, and a bit overconfident.
03
After 00, they could not understand "irrigation" and "sweeping",
Who else plays the forum?
Born in 1999, the Internet company has gone through 23 years.
Not only Tianya, but also the original Xici Hutong, Tiexue Forum and other famous communities have been closed. In addition to the problems of the enterprise itself, this is more like a change of the times.
According to the data of China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the decline of the forum began in 2009, when the utilization rate of such services declined for the first time.
On the whole, the content of the forum is "heavy", and its proud high-quality posts and replies need to have a deeper accumulation, and it needs to pay a certain amount of time to organize the language. After the forum was transferred to the mobile terminal, everyone's patience in coding on the small screen was also decreasing.
In addition, when the main users of the post-80s generation are busy making a living, and the post-95s and post-00s cannot understand the terms "irrigation" and "sweeping", fewer and fewer people play the forum.
Externally, with the development of mobile Internet, Sina Weibo, Momo and Soul mainly focus on strangers' social interaction. In terms of acquaintances' social interaction, WeChat takes the lead, and short videos and live broadcasts are also constantly competing for the market.
The dual pressure from inside and outside makes the forum no longer popular, leaving more feelings.
Xing Ming once said that the root of Tianya lies in its deep foundation: the coconut trees on Hainan Island are nearly close to the ground when blown by the wind, and can still survive. Tianya is as tough and tenacious as the coconut trees on Hainan Island.
Tianya is really tough. But it is sad that a large number of people have begun to say goodbye to Tianya before it dies.
