Top of the Great Era

Chapter 2308 Verticalization

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

Yahoo is a giant with dozens of products.

Among them is Yahoo Music.

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

The current 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.

As a result, most regular music products can no longer survive, and they can't afford copyright.

Yahoo Music is in such an awkward position.

Instead of this, why not outsource the Yahoo Music channel to Spotify and turn Yahoo Music into Spotify Music. Spotify gets Yahoo's traffic, and Yahoo earns a premium for the service.

Then, Zhou Buqi went to Yahoo UK.

From a global perspective, Yahoo has fallen a little bit, 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 is still high, second only to Google, and basically similar to Facebook.

Yahoo UK is an important asset of Yahoo.

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

Zhou Buqi felt quite a headache about this.

What a mess!

The most important thing to transform Yahoo should be to disband all these messy product teams, and all these broken channels should be closed.

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 next to her said meaningfully: "The United States can't penetrate into it. If you have time, you can go around more and get a more comprehensive understanding of Yahoo."

Zhou Buqi also understood their intentions.

Yahoo America is deeply entrenched.

In contrast, Yahoo UK is much better and it is easier to exert influence.After all, what the UK is doing here are some marginalized products of Yahoo, and the business that the US headquarters doesn't like is transferred to the UK.

It can be easier to start from the outside.

Zhou Buqi gave some encouragement, "Take your time, don't rush the overall transformation."

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

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

When old friends meet, there are endless things to say.

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

There are more than 20 in total, half of them are Chinese, which is almost the same as a private room.

The topic naturally revolves around Yahoo.

Xu Liangjie said: "Everyone is very cooperative with me, the president of Yahoo, at work. After all, my qualifications are here, and I am a bit 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 you want to reform Yahoo in an all-round way, you won't even be able to pass Yang Zhiyuan's test in a short period of time, so let's take it slowly. We will make bigger changes after we have achieved results and are convinced. I looked at Yahoo, and there are too many meaningless products, at least half of them should be cut off.”

Xu Liangjie nodded, "It's almost the same as in China. Sohu, Sina, and Netease, all kinds of websites, are gradually being defeated by vertical websites."

"indeed!"

Zhou Buqi had already expounded such a point of view on Ziweixing.

This is the development of the times.

Industry specializing in surgery.

If everything works, everything fails.

Take Sohu Auto, for example, which used to be the most popular product in the domestic auto industry, and it was extremely profitable.But then it failed. Many vertical and professional automotive websites appeared on the market, such as Autohome and Bitauto.com.

Sohu is a portal network, and there are many sub-channels like Sohu Auto under its umbrella, so it is impossible to do it too well.These professional automotive websites are different. If you focus on making cars, you can stand out smoothly.

Zheng Xiaoli is an expert in mobile products, and said softly: "In the App era of smartphones, the vertical attribute is stronger. The biggest difference between mobile apps and websites is that they are limited by the size of the mobile phone screen. Like Yahoo, Sohu This kind of website can list more than a dozen sub-channels for users to choose. But the space of the mobile phone is limited, so it can’t 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 the portal... It is also difficult to compete with those vertical apps. In the future, Yahoo only needs to keep a few important ones. Its sub-channels are enough, news, sports, finance, life, these four major sections are enough.”

Zhou Buqi said with a smile: "We still have to do it in the form of recommended streams."

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

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

Yahoo's brand is big.

But not necessarily a good thing.

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

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

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

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

On the Internet, no matter whether it is Google News, CNN News, or new and vigorous 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 have a good vertical development effect.

The biggest feature of smart phones is the verticalization of products.

(End of this chapter)