Many Baidu middle and high-level people describe Baidu’s current situation as an elephant turning around, which has a good trend, but there are still various problems.
Source of this article: Interface News , author Xiao Fang XF, editor Wen Shuqi
By May last year, the president of Baidu search company Xiang Hailong left, and Baidu made up his mind to revolutionize himself. Over the past year, there has been little progress that can be perceived by the outside world. But Shen Jiu believes that Baidu has had many positive changes, and it is difficult for users to perceive it in a year or two, and it will take time to propagate to Wall Street.
Image source: Visual China
“A lot of meetings?”
“Normal. My main role now is to hold meetings, communicate, communicate, arrange tasks, and check progress. The main thing is to do these things.”
Recently, when the interface news reporter saw Shen Shao, the executive vice president of Baidu Group and the head of the mobile ecological business group, he described his working state in this way.
In May of last year, the former senior vice president of Baidu and president of Baidu search company Xiang Hailong left, and Baidu search company transformed into a mobile ecological business group (MEG), which is under the responsibility of Shen Jiu. After taking office, Shen Jiu was quite low-key and barely spoke out.
In terms of business, there are not many changes that Baidu MEG can perceive in the past year. It was only recently that Baidu had a new move and made a live broadcast.
Short video and live broadcast are the key businesses of Baidu this year. Recently, Baidu has also launched a live e-commerce live streaming video.
However, the outside world feels that Baidu is slowing down again. The competition between short video and live broadcasting has already become the Red Sea-Vibrato has exceeded 400 million daily and Kuaishou daily exceeded 300 million, and the market has almost been divided. Baidu is working hard at this time, wanting to have a place in it, it is a small probability event.
In the past year, Baidu ’s short video performance is unbelievable. In the first quarter of last year, the daily activity of good-looking videos was 22 million, and the current daily activity is 30 million. There has been little growth in the last six months. To make matters worse, in early February, the good-looking video was asked to be removed from the app store for a month due to violations and missedNew opportunities during the peak of the epidemic.
Baidu ’s other popular UGC short video application, National Small Video, has fallen out of the top 600 in the Apple App store, with only 4,000 downloads per day. And good-looking videos have recently integrated the vertical version of short video form, which is equivalent to the small state of the general public is basically abandoned.
Good-looking video had a period of rapid growth in 2018. In its initial stage, Baidu App’s drainage played a great role. However, under the competition of products such as watermelon video, vibrato, and Kuaishou, the growth of good-looking video encountered the ceiling. Baidu internally attributed this to unclear product positioning.
This year, with the adjustment of Baidu ’s mobile ecological strategy, short videos and live broadcasts have also been repositioned to focus on intellectual content and serve the search ecology. At the 2020 Baidu Mobile Ecology Conference held on May 13, Baidu demonstrated its determination to continue investing: it will invest 500 million in subsidies to discover live broadcast creators, and 100 billion in traffic resources to support short video creators.
By May last year, the president of Baidu search company Xiang Hailong left, and Baidu made up his mind to revolutionize himself. Over the past year, there is not much progress that the outside world can perceive: in terms of revenue, Baidu ’s revenue in 2019 has been beaten by bytes; in terms of market value, Baidu has shrunk by more than half from the 2018 market value of $ 80 billion; On the product, one of the few consolations is that Baidu App’s daily activity has been higher than today’s headlines, the latter’s daily activity has declined this year, and Baidu App is still growing.
For the perception of the outside world, Shen Jiu told the interface news that cognition is the fact. But he emphasized that Baidu has had many positive changes, but it is difficult for users to perceive in a year or two, and it will take time to propagate to Wall Street.
In the past year, Shen Jiu made drastic adjustments to Baidu ’s mobile ecological business, but the results still need time to test.
Two decision-making mistakes
Some of Baidu ’s departing employees are sighed that the core staff of Douyin ’s early employees was a product manager of Baidu Post Bar, and he was also a key figure in the rapid growth of Douyin.
By setting aside time for a few years, Baidu is not without opportunities or talents in the mobile content ecosystem. A former employee of Baidu said that in 2015, some people inside Dasuo mentioned making short videos, but because Baidu focused on the O2O business, no one ignored it.
Because internal attention is not enough, Baidu’s action on the information flow and short video was also much slower than byte bounce.
In 2014, Baidu News, the information flow product promoted by Baidu, used personalized recommendations like today ’s headlines, but it is more concerned about the quality of content, adopts a targeted invitation system, strictly controls the number of media and self-media, and distributes the mechanism The above is not entirely an algorithm recommendation, adding the recommendation of seed users.
Informed sources revealed that Baidu News performed generally, with DAU (single-day active users) peaking at only 800,000 and then falling to 200,000.
By the end of 2015, Zhu Guang, the head of Baidu News, was transferred to take charge of the financial business, and Baidu News was abandoned. At the end of 2016, Baidu started to do algorithm recommendation and introduced a large number of self-media accounts, and in September of that year, the daily work of Toutiao today exceeded 60 million.
In 2018, ByteDance put more energy on Douyin, and Baidu App made a big investment to catch up with today’s headlines.
“All in the information stream, but missed the short video.” The above-mentioned insiders were very emotional when talking about the past. In 2017, the time of the vibrato has not reached 10 million. The internal search for the short video has not been recognized.
When Baidu realizes the short video dividend, the high-quality products on the market can no longer afford to invest, and there is little hope of doing it yourself. It is difficult for Baidu to form a content creation ecosystem like Douyin and Kuaishou.
Behind these decision errors, Baidu has not figured out the direction of development on the mobile terminal for a long time. Even Baidu’s accumulation of more than ten years of search has formed a mindset that hinders the transformation of the mobile terminal.
According to a person familiar with the matter, after Shen Zhen took office, Baidu internally reflected on whether it is a step behind in the perception of mobile ecology, and concluded that compared with some new companies, Baidu It’s a little late, but it’s ahead of similar search companies at home and abroad. From the perspective of search companies at home and abroad, everyone’s understanding of the mobile ecosystem has been hindered by search.
Shen Jiu told Interface News that each company has its own core advantages, which is why Baidu started late in the information flow but developed rapidly. Compared with byte beating, Baidu is definitely not behind in the construction of search content ecology.
Return to search
In the past year, Shen Jiu has been thinking about the core advantages of Baidu ’s mobile Internet era. He believes that it is still search. Without the advantages of search, it is too difficult for Baidu to do independent innovation.
After taking office, Shen Jiu did not pay much attention to new products, but more to sort out and integrate existing products. Baidu ’s strategy in the mobile Internet era has been adjusted a few times, from O2O to information flow to short video, and many opportunities have been missed. Finally, the strategic focus is returned to search, and the content ecology with search as the core is redone on the mobile side.
Under the new strategic thinking, Baidu gave up the “Four King Kong” business a few years ago because of losses.
The “Four King Kong” businesses refer to music, video, literature, and games, which are complementary to the search content ecology. During the transition to mobile Internet, these services were gradually abandoned: in December 2015, Baidu Music merged with Taihe MusicIn September 2016, Baidu Video Spin-off carried out independent financing to reduce its own investment pressure; in May 2016, Baidu Games was sold to Duoku Fund and changed its name to Duoku Games; in June 2016, Baidu Literature continued to lose money It was sold to Perfect World, and later renamed Zongwen Literature, with Baidu accounting for about 30% of the shares.
Baidu has rebuilt its literature and gaming team, launched literature and gaming channels on the Baidu App, and strategically invested in NetEase Cloud Music in music.
Video and live broadcasts are regarded as key businesses this year, and ultimately, they also serve search. After the market is divided between Douyin and Kuaishou, it is very difficult to build an independent app to build a content ecosystem.
Under the new idea, Baidu ’s positioning of short videos and live broadcasts is divided into two parts: one part will serve the information distribution, and it will be presented in the search results as information like the graphic content carried by Baijia. For interactive entertainment, like other products such as Douyin and Kuaishou, it is for users to entertain and entertain.
Short videos and live broadcasts serving information distribution are regarded as strategic priorities, which is why Baidu continues to invest in this field. In connecting people and information, Baidu tried to make some innovations through short video and live broadcast. For example, if the user searches for “what to do if the family is not harmonious”, the previous results are all illustrated by the text. Now the results of the live broadcast will appear. After entering the live broadcast room, the user can directly find a family problem expert to solve the problem.
More importantly, according to Shen Jiu ’s plan, Baidu will transform from “connecting people and information” to connecting “people, information and services” in the past. The applet will take care of service needs and can be used in health, government affairs, shopping, travel and other subdivision scenarios. Among them, Baidu Health achieved rapid growth during the epidemic. There are currently more than 300,000 online consultations per day, with a peak value of more than 850,000.
According to a Baidu insider, the connection service is also used by Shen Jiu to counter today ’s headlines.
Toutiao is online today, and the competition with Baidu will continue. In terms of content, today’s headlines have the accumulation of headlines, watermelon videos and vibrato, but the satisfaction of the service is still weak. Baidu plans to take the lead in the service and make a better search engine.
Adjust the organizational structure
During this year, Baidu ’s organizational structure and personnel adjustments have also undergone drastic reforms, based on Shen Shao ’s thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of Baidu ’s mobile ecological business and other companies in the industry.
Last year, a senior Baidu personage told Interface News that Baidu has been aware of the challenges facing its business and revenue since 2018. As a 20-year-old company, Baidu has a “big company disease”, no new organization, no vitality.
On the one hand, each product line is independent, with its own technology, products and even sales, Baidu ’s mid-stage capabilities