id: 3092a890-927c-11ee-9834-5b25a4c89fe9
Has the Internet Lost its Richness? - Huxiu.com#
Omnivore#
Highlights#
So there will be a change, which is that brands are starting to pay more attention to offline. ⤴️ ^84096ce0
- High popularity, especially among the young generation of mobile internet natives; 2. Lack of differentiation and discovery in the products and services offered; 3. The cost of acquiring customers online is becoming higher. ⤴️ ^7c7287d2
Reflect the differentiation of the brand; attract the desired users. ⤴️ ^b9dc96d1
Has the Internet Lost its Richness?#
This article explores the phenomenon of the Internet losing its richness, arguing that the Internet has abandoned its efforts to stratify and align everyone downwards. The article mentions the diversity and richness of the real world, as well as the Internet's failure to provide differentiated products and services.
• 🌍 The Internet has abandoned its efforts to stratify, resulting in a loss of richness.
• 🏙️ The diversity and richness of the real world are lacking in the Internet.
• 📚 The Internet's distribution and generation of content have failed to provide rich, differentiated products and services that meet user needs.
I want to share a recent strong feeling: it seems that the Internet has lost its richness and has brought all of us to a common aesthetic and preference.
The loss of richness is because the Internet seems to have abandoned its efforts to stratify. The Internet aligns everyone downwards, catering to the most basic human needs.
I.
User needs have many layers. This is also the fascinating aspect of the real world: the real world can be stratified.
For a long time, as I walked north from my home along Dawang Road, I encountered the diversity and richness of the real world. Next to our home, there is a residential area for the families of the Air Force, and there is a nice-looking residential building being built by the People's Daily. The surrounding area is mostly middle-class communities with housing prices ranging from 80,000 to just over 100,000 yuan, typical middle-class neighborhoods. Around it, there are commercial establishments to meet the needs of these people. For example, Rong Xiaoguan, Green Leaf Supermarket, 711 convenience store, Hema, and there is also a large shopping mall nearby called Heshenghui.
Continuing north, passing under a railway bridge that separates the CBD from Shuangjing, there have been some aunties setting up stalls since the outbreak, with a kettle, a stool, and offering haircuts by the roadside. I often see delivery drivers or electric scooter riders stopping by for a haircut.
Moving forward, near the Guanghui Bridge at the intersection with Tonghui River North Road, there are tricycle vendors who come out in the evening to sell roasted cold noodles, grilled squid, stir-fried rice noodles, etc. After crossing the bridge, there is the SOHO Modern City, where many small companies choose to have offices because it has some of the lowest rents for office buildings and commercial properties in the CBD.
Further north, near Dawang Bridge, you can see stores like GUCCI, Prada, Apple, etc. This is SKP, which had annual sales of over 23 billion yuan in 2021 and 2022, and has been the number one shopping mall in the country for four consecutive years. Next to it is the China World Trade Center, where companies like Sequoia, Tesla, and Marriott and Ritz-Carlton have offices.
On this road, there are already several types of user needs and scenes that meet those needs. There are street-side hairdressing stalls, middle-class communities like mine, gathering places for startups, luxury consumption scenes, and offices of top multinational companies and financial institutions.
In fact, the richness of the real world, the physical world, or the multidimensional world has always existed. Everyone lives together harmoniously and can cross over at any time. This is what I used to boast about the big cities in China being better than many other big cities in the world. We are not physically isolated, and we can meet completely different people just by turning a corner.
Of course, the key to this is the upward channel. There must be an upward channel between different layers. If the upward channel is smooth, it is an ideal state. If the upward channel is not smooth, we call it social stratification.
In fact, providing layered, differentiated, and rich products and services to meet the diverse and differentiated user needs has always been there. I have worked in the media industry. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal provide layered content services that are more elite and niche, while newspapers like the New York Post have a larger readership. During the newspaper wars, The New York Times was called the "grey lady," representing dullness; in contrast, popular tabloids like The Sun and The World were well-received.
Their readers have differences in magnitude, with some overlap but mostly different. Correspondingly, their advertising clients are also different. If you consider yourself a respected brand, it is difficult to accept having your advertisements appear alongside murder cases and gossip news; but various classified ads for daily life are suitable for mass-market newspapers.
The Internet is magical, and its distribution and generation of content have gone through many iterations. Let's not even talk about content production, just content distribution alone has gone through four iterations: portals, search, social media, and recommendations. But strangely, the Internet has not been able to provide as rich and differentiated products and services that meet user needs as the real world does.
Many people and companies are at a loss when faced with the constantly evolving Internet, and I think this may be an important reason. For example, live streaming is often compared to street performances, "making pancakes on the spot, taking people on the spot." Street performances certainly have their own user needs and business ecology, but when the Internet is reduced to just street performances, many brands that used to have stores in Hang Lung Plaza and SKP are a bit confused. When Kuaishou emerged, urban white-collar workers in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen were amazed at what China was really like; now these amazed people may find that the Internet is almost the same.
II.
The second feeling that comes with this is that it puts brands in an awkward position. Because brands are all about stratified, differentiated, and rich business. Only white-label or all-inclusive brands that satisfy basic needs do not need to stratify or differentiate.
Last week, I had a chat with a friend. They run a very successful new consumer brand. Chinese new consumer brands, including theirs, were able to rise before 2021, thanks to platforms like Xiaohongshu, among others. For product and brand companies, platforms like Xiaohongshu, combined with e-commerce channels, have essentially redefined how products reach users. Marketing can rely on new communities and content platforms; sales can rely on e-commerce platforms. It is very different from the past, where marketing relied on TV and print media, and sales relied on offline supermarkets and convenience stores.
The situation is different now. 2021 was a particularly hot year for new consumer brands, but from 2022 until now, it has been particularly cold. Financing is definitely not available, and many consumer-focused teams in institutions have disbanded. But the advantage of consumer goods is that as long as your minimum commercialization model is working, you don't need financing, and you can survive. Just balance your income and expenses. Just don't talk about growth for now, so he is not worried about money.
His biggest concern is that he is not sure if he should still focus on building a brand. I believe this is also a question in the minds of many brand builders.
Why is there this uncertainty?
The first reason is that everyone is talking about price today. The rise of Pinduoduo has been the hottest topic recently. But what Pinduoduo's rise means for brands and merchants, I think we need to see more facts. And because Pinduoduo is completely on the side of consumers, pursuing lower-priced products. The pressure it brings has forced other e-commerce platforms to follow suit. It is said that during this year's Double Eleven, when Taotian Group met with merchants, the word "brand" was not mentioned at all, and all they talked about was price.
The sales channel is changing.
The second reason is that he believes that major user-centric internet content platforms, whether they are called communities or social media, are becoming less friendly to brands. The entire internet is becoming more like Weibo or Zhihu. The core of becoming more like Weibo or Zhihu is that content increasingly emphasizes the clash of different viewpoints rather than focusing on presenting facts. The most popular content revolves around controversial viewpoints based on disputed facts.
The marketing channels for brands are also changing.
==So there will be a change, which is that brands are starting to pay more attention to offline.==
I previously shared a viewpoint that I arrived at after talking to people who work offline, which can be summarized as follows: online has become a traditional industry. Because online has started to show several characteristics: ==1. High popularity, especially among the young generation of mobile internet natives; 2. Lack of differentiation and discovery in the products and services offered; 3. The cost of acquiring customers online is becoming higher.==
Later, I met some brand builders and continued to hear their enthusiasm for the resurgence of offline. The important reasons are that offline can achieve two things: ==reflect the differentiation of the brand; attract the desired users.==
Bertrand Russell has a quote that people often cite: "To be happy, one must have a variety of interests." Richness is what makes the world both loved and hated, but also where people find joy. So, we really don't want the Internet to become more and more monotonous. After all, we spend so much time on it every day.