Chapter 35 Passive supplementary lessons Sina's counterattack

The predecessor of Sina, Sina.com, was established at the end of 1998 by the merger of Sitong Lifang Information Technology Co., Ltd. and Huayuan Information Company, and launched a Chinese website with the same name.Among them, Stone Lifang holds 60% of the shares, and Huayuan Information holds 40% of the shares.Stone Lifang was co-founded in December 1993 by Stone Group Corporation, Wang Zhidong, the inventor of "Chinese Star", and Yan Yuanchao, the inventor of CCDOS. According to the agreement, Stone Group holds 79% of the shares, and the management holds 21% of the shares. .Huayuan Information Co., Ltd. was founded in April 1995 in Silicon Valley, USA by three Chinese-American graduate students from Stanford University, with Jiang Fengnian as the general manager.Before merging with Sitong Lifang, Huayuan was already the largest overseas Chinese website.Prior to this, in September 1997, Stone Lifang successfully introduced three international high-tech venture capital companies including Walden International Investment Group, and carried out international transformation. It was the first software company in China to introduce a venture capital mechanism and a Silicon Valley management model. .After layers of dilution, the major shareholder of Sina is not the founder Wang Zhidong, and the shares are quite dispersed.

Because of the scattered ownership, facts can prove that Sina's major shareholders are impatient. When they can't see a high growth point, the CEO's dismissal becomes a matter of course. Since 1999, Sina has changed five CEOs.Regarding the resignation of the first CEO Wang Zhidong, some media have made the following analysis: the company’s stock price continued to fall, and the communication with the board of directors was not smooth. The board of directors complained that Wang Zhidong could not come up with a specific executable profit plan, which led to Wang Zhidong’s departure.However, it is worth mentioning that from 2000 to 2001, my country's Internet industry bubble burst, and the stock price of the entire industry was in a state of decline.The continuous decline of the company's stock price is not something that individuals can stop.But business is like this, someone has to be responsible for poor performance, so Wang Zhidong became the one who needs to take responsibility.

The outside world concluded that the reason for the resignation of the second CEO Mao Daolin was also poor performance: In terms of emerging businesses, value-added telecoms and online games, Sina was the last to start, resulting in failure to make achievements in these two areas; Jiang Fengnian Zeng picked up the phone in front of Mao Daolin, and asked the management one by one for advice. Except for Yan Yuanchao, the technical director, who did not make a statement, almost all the management expressed "no Mao".In the end, the board of directors "agreed" Mao Daolin's decision to resign by a vote of 4 to 3.When Mao Daolin became CEO, Sina quietly reversed course and turned to the field of enterprise service platform. On February 25, 2002, Sina announced its entry into the field of enterprise information services.On April 5 of the same year, the future development direction of Sina was announced in the United States.Sina.com changed its name to Sina, and has three independent business entities under its jurisdiction: Sina.com (sina.com), Sina Enterprise Services (sina.net), and Sina Online Sol (Sina Online).By 2003, Sina's revenue mainly relied on unlimited value-added services and advertising.

Sina changed its CEO five times in ten years: Sha Zhengzhi, Wang Zhidong, Mao Daolin, and Wang Yan. When Sina’s shareholders made adjustments to the management, the reasons were all the same. The performance was not good. There is a saying in the industry that Sina’s CEO is very poor. It is difficult to escape the fate of two years.The previous statement is just an explanation of the peripheral environment when Sina entered the field of instant messaging.The history of the competition between Sina and Tencent in the field of instant messaging was during Wang Yan's tenure. Unlike the previous three CEOs of Sina who were technical experts or experts in capital operations, Wang Yan appeared in a "pragmatic" image.Wang Yan's kindergarten, primary school and middle school are all in Zhongguancun.Wang Yan clearly remembers the first time he came into contact with the Internet in Paris in January 1995. He described it this way: "In January 1995, I exchanged e-mails with classmates in the United States. At that time, I was too excited to speak. Once I communicated with my classmates in the United States through E-mail, I felt as excited as when I got the university notice. The Internet made me feel that the world is too wonderful and full of temptation.” During the gap between studying in France and returning to China, Wang Yan met Wang Zhidong, the founder of Sina, and the two hit it off. In 1996, Wang Yan returned to China and founded the International Network Department of Stone Lifang Company with Wang Zhidong. In that year, Wang Yan was 24 years old.

After taking the helm of Sina, 33-year-old Wang Yan has been trying to find a third tentacles for Sina besides news and TVB.Sina in this period showed a trend of blooming everywhere. In 2003, Sina first entered the game field through the establishment of a joint venture company, and in the same year entered online travel through acquisitions; in April 2004, Sina cooperated with Yahoo to enter the e-commerce field, and then announced the acquisition of UC instant messaging technology platform in July.However, except for the development of UC, other new businesses have not been successful.The outside world believes that for Sina, which has dispersed equity, with frequent CEO changes and a single profit model, Wang Yan’s various efforts during his tenure are just trying to change the status quo.Instant messaging is also a direction for Wang Yan.

In fact, in the field of instant messaging, Sina is not a latecomer.As early as 1999, Sina launched an IM tool called Sina Pager. At that time, this tool was not inferior to Tencent QQ, and it also had a certain user base at that time.But Sina did not spend too much energy on the IM field, so Sina Pager gradually disappeared.The rise of Tencent QQ made Sina's decision-makers regret it, and so did Mao Daolin.During his tenure, Sina launched its own IM product - see.From this thing similar to Sina Pager, we can see Sina's remorse.After Wang Yan took office, in order to change Sina's weak position in the field of instant messaging, it is a good competitive strategy to acquire the current dominant instant messaging software.The acquisition of Langma UC was made under such circumstances.

On July 8, 2004, Wang Yan announced that Sina had officially completed the acquisition of Langma UC for US$36 million.UC Langma, established in Guizhou, was a dark horse that suddenly appeared in the domestic instant messaging market at the end of 2002.Within a year after its launch in 2002, it had already reached the level of 200,000 people online. From the very beginning, UC started with fashion and personalization to snatch the young people's market, because there are few examples of a single company dominating the market segment, and the current pattern of QQ leading or even monopolizing the market in China will definitely be broken.In addition, when UC came out, it happened to be the time when QQ restricted user registration and officially launched a QQ line number with a monthly fee of 2 yuan.When UC reached 20,000 online users at the end of 2002, QQ happened to officially start charging for QQ line numbers. UC and most similar software avoid the mainstream QQ user group, which is the so-called QQ advantage area, and seek development through differentiated competition. Therefore, 200,000 people are online at the same time in a very short period of time, and it has won the second position in domestic IM software. , but this development strategy is also easily suppressed by opponents. QQ quickly adjusted its charging strategy and reopened the application for free numbers, which is said to be aimed at UC.

After Sina acquired Langma UC with a huge sum of money, Wang Yan is also very confident in his advantages in user resources. Sina has a strong brand influence and a large loyal user base, while Langma UC has innovative content services and Leading technology base.It should be said that Sina's make-up classes are at the right time, but the tuition fees are a bit expensive.Netease launched Bubble 2004, which is actually making up lessons. Almost at the same time, Sohu, not to be outdone, also challenged Tencent QQ with the help of Soq.The reason why the three major portals have entered the field of instant messaging one after another is nothing more than coveting massive user group data.From a business point of view, it is becoming more and more difficult for portal websites to make money on wireless, and instant messaging is the best field to combine with wireless business.Following SMS, free email and search engines, portals have focused their competition on instant messaging software.Portals have chosen to focus on the instant messaging market in 2004. It should be said that they are not simply making up lessons, but also exploring future profit points.