Top of the big era

Zhou Buqi returned to London from Manchester, and first went to Spotify to learn about the cooperation between Helo and Spotify, and the subsequent cooperation plan between Spotify and Yahoo.

Yahoo is a giant with dozens of products under its umbrella.

Among them is Yahoo Music.

However, Yahoo Music is really bad. Apart from being able to report some music news, it really lacks achievements in the field of substantive music content.

Today's music copyright management is very strict, and with the emergence of music streaming media such as Spotify and Pandora, the price of music copyright is getting higher and higher.

So much so that most formal music products can no longer survive and cannot afford the copyright.

Yahoo Music is in such an awkward position.

Instead of doing this, it is better to outsource the Yahoo Music channel to Spotify and turn Yahoo Music into Spotify Music. Spotify gets Yahoo's traffic, and Yahoo can earn an additional service fee.

Then, Zhou Buqi went to Yahoo UK.

From a global perspective, Yahoo is in decline, and its traffic has been overtaken by many other products. However, in the North American and British markets, Yahoo is still the most influential Internet company, and its traffic remains high, second only to Google and basically similar to Facebook.

Yahoo UK is an important asset of Yahoo!

The main product teams for vertical channels such as Yahoo Music, Yahoo Parenting, Yahoo Travel, Yahoo Groups, and Yahoo Gender are all based in London, England.

Zhou Buqi had a bit of a headache about this.

What a mess!

The most important thing to do in transforming Yahoo is to disband these messy product teams and close all these broken channels.

When I went to Yahoo UK, I was surprised to see Xu Liangjie and Zheng Xiaoli.

Zhou Buqi was very happy, "Why are you here?"

Xu Liangjie smiled and said, "I've been here for several days."

Zheng Xiaoli, who was standing next to her, said meaningfully: "The U.S. side can't penetrate. If you have time, you can go around more and understand Yahoo more comprehensively."

Zhou Buqi also understood their intentions.

Yahoo is deeply entrenched in the US.

In comparison, Yahoo UK is much better and easier to exert influence. After all, what the UK is doing are some marginal products of Yahoo, and all the business that the US headquarters does not like is transferred to the UK.

It can be easier to start from the outside.

Zhou Buqi encouraged him, "Take your time, don't rush the overall transformation."

Zheng Xiaoli gave good news and said with a smile: "The partial transformation plan can be implemented. This time we can start after returning from the UK. It is expected that in two to three months, the Yahoo App of the media platform can be implemented A trial version will be launched.”

Xu Liangjie said: "The product is easy to make, but the difficulty lies in the relationship with third-party information sources. Fortunately, Yahoo's brand value is very high and it still has huge fame and influence in the United States. It is not too difficult to do so."

When old friends meet, they have endless things to say.

Zhou Buqi didn’t know any of Yahoo’s UK executives, and he wasn’t interested in them at all. He still cared more about his own people. Invite them to McDonald's for lunch at noon.

There are more than 20 people in total, half of them are Chinese, which is almost like a private venue.

The topic naturally revolves around Yahoo.

Xu Liangjie said: "Everyone is very cooperative with me, the president of Yahoo, in my work. After all, my qualifications are here, and I am somewhat famous in Silicon Valley. I will take care of Xiaoli, and her transformation plan can always be done." It was implemented relatively smoothly.”

Zhou Buqi said: "That's fine! If we want to comprehensively transform Yahoo, even Yang Zhiyuan won't be able to pass it in a short time, so let's do it slowly. We will wait until we have achieved results and are convinced before making bigger changes. I’ve looked at Yahoo, and there are too many pointless products, and at least half of them should be cut off.”

Xu Liangjie nodded, "Just like in China, full-category websites such as Sohu, Sina, and NetEase are gradually being defeated by vertical websites."

"indeed!"

Zhou Buqi had already expressed this view on Ziweixing.

This is the development of the times.

Industry specializing in surgery.

If everything is ok, nothing is ok.

Take Sohu Auto, for example, which used to be the most popular product in the domestic automotive field and was extremely profitable. But that didn’t work anymore. Many vertical professional automobile websites appeared on the market, such as Autohome, Bitauto, etc.

Sohu is a portal network, and it has many sub-channels like Sohu Auto, so it is impossible to be too sophisticated in doing so. These professional automobile websites are different. They can easily stand out by focusing on automobiles.

Zheng Xiaoli is an expert in mobile products. She said softly: "In the era of smart phone apps, the vertical attribute has become stronger. The biggest difference between mobile apps and websites is that they are limited by the size of the mobile phone screen. Like Yahoo and Sohu This kind of website can list more than a dozen sub-channels for users to choose. However, the space of mobile phones is limited and cannot be displayed at all."

Zhou Buqi said: "Yes, so some niche channels are meaningless."

Zheng Xiaoli said: "Even if it exists, it is difficult to fully display it in the space of a mobile phone. Moreover, the form of portal...it is also difficult to compete with those vertical apps. In the future, Yahoo will only retain a few important The sub-channels are enough, and the four major sections of news, sports, finance, and life are enough.”

Zhou Buqi smiled and said: "It still needs to be done in the form of recommendation flow."

"Yes, I mean that the product presentation should be concise enough. So many products are crowded together, which is bloated and suffocating." Zheng Xiaoli added, "And Yahoo... has a strong brand, but it is too old. Now that they are older, they have become grandparents in the hearts of many young people. This makes it difficult for some of Yahoo’s marginalized vertical products to compete. For example, for music products, Yahoo Music and Spotify compete on the same stage. , users will definitely choose Spotify, and the choice is made from the name.”

Zhou Buqi nodded, "Well, in this non-core business vertical field, Yahoo's strong brand has become a liability."

Yahoo's brand is huge.

But that's not necessarily a good thing.

Yahoo Music wants to develop an independent App called "Yahoo Music". The name will make people feel rigid, rigid, boring, and old-fashioned.

Although Spotify is new and not well-known, it is full of vitality and is more popular among young people.

However, it is different if it is the core business.

For example, Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance, and Yahoo Mail are all Yahoo's core businesses, which have a positive effect on the brand.

On the Internet, whether it is Google News, CNN News, or the emerging and vibrant news products, it is difficult to compete with Yahoo News.

Yahoo's brand value and industry influence are actually in several fields such as news, sports, finance, life, and email.

It is difficult for more miscellaneous sub-channels to achieve good vertical development effects.

The biggest feature of smartphones is the verticalization of products.