Group Discussion Group 10

 Baidu

Group Members:

Liu Zhilin

Chen Chenyu

Wang Ziling

Luo Yingxue

Qian Zirui

Huang Yufei

Changes:

Over the past decade, Baidu has experienced significant changes, encompassing both strengths and weaknesses:

Strengths:

1. Successful AI Transition: Through its “ALL in AI” strategy, Baidu successfully shifted focus to becoming an AI-driven company, excelling in areas like autonomous driving, voice recognition, and natural language processing.

2. Technical Breakthroughs with Apollo and PaddlePaddle: Baidu’s Apollo program has taken a leading role in the autonomous driving sector, while PaddlePaddle, China’s first self-developed deep learning platform, has made significant contributions to AI advancement.

3. Expansion into Smart Ecosystems and Hardware: Baidu expanded into the Internet of Things (IoT) market with products like the Xiaodu smart speakers, leveraging its AI technology to drive growth in the smart living space.

Weaknesses:

1. User Migration: With the rise of platforms like ByteDance, and Xiaohongshu, users increasingly shifted to other search engines and content platforms, leading to a shrinking user base for Baidu.

2. Decreased Database Availability: The quality of search results declined, with reduced database information and a noticeable increase in advertisements, negatively impacting user experience.

3. Declining Market Capitalization: Baidu’s market value fell, transforming it from a once-dominant tech giant into a company with diminished influence. 

The 3Cs Model:

Business Model:

Baidu’s business model is a comprehensive and dynamic framework that revolves primarily around its core offerings of search engines, online advertising, content distribution,    mobile search, and app distribution. It further extends into the realms of Baidu Cloud, offering cloud-based solutions, and encompasses a myriad of supplementary services, including shopping and travel search, online payments, and map service. Moreover, Baidu remains at the forefront of technological advancements, continually pushing the boundaries by venturing into emerging fields like artificial intelligence and cloud computing.

Competitors:

The key competitors of Baidu can be divided into different fields. Firstly, as a search engine, the key competitors include Xiaohongshu, Zhihu, Sogou, Weibo, and some other similar search engines. These search engines are built for users to find useful information and knowledge. However, when considering Baidu's resource storage system (Baidu Wangpan), the competitors would be Kuake, Xunlei, and so on. The main function of these Apps is sharing and storing digital resources. And finally, in the field of map systems (Baidu Map), the key competitors of Baidu are Gaode, Apple Map, and so on.

Clients:

Individual users: users can get relevant information by using its search engines, including web pages, videos, images, and other services. AI has also been used to optimize recommendation results, improve the accuracy of the results, and provide users with a summary overview of results.

Advertisers: BAIDU offers online marketing services to a diverse range of advertisers from various industries. It allows advertisers to have their ads shown on the search results pages, and the more advertisers pay for their ads, the higher their ads will be placed on the search results page. 

Content providers: content providers are those who contribute their copyrighted content to BAIDU products.

Short Essay 1_Chau Yee Ki, Joyce (1155206824)

The launch event of Apple's new products, which was held last week, reminds me of the concept of vertical integration. 

Apple is undoubtedly one of the most successful corporations that applies vertical integration strategy. It controls the designs of hardware, software, and services to create its own ecosystem which brings the Company success. For example, the Company has already launched 12 models for iPhone and different models for other products such as iPhone, iPad, Macbook, Apple Watch, AirPods, and so forth. 

With the vertical integration, it allows Apple to maintain high standards of quality and innovation in the products, ensuring the customers to have a consistent experience across the product range. Also, the ecosystem of Apple is known as "Walled Garden" the products of the Company and it does not function well with Android or other competitive devices, considering as one of the advantages of maintaining high standards of privacy so that the users will not be easier to leave and enhance the customer loyalty, which in turn increases the profit. 

However, the vertical integration brings various drawbacks and potential challenges to Apple. First of all, the “updated” models of iPhone in recent years brought no surprises to the users. To give an example, there are many opinions from analysts and market commenting that the new features of iPhone 16 are limited and people are no longer impressed by the new model. It is obvious that the quality of goods appears to show a downward trend which may affect the sales and profits of the Company.   

Also, by employing vertical integration strategy, the flexibility and innovation of the company might be limited. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has undergone significant advancements in recent years and various corporations strive to develop the related field to stay ahead of market trends. Unfortunately, Apple has been focused on its own activities and expects to create its own products by itself, resulting in the capabilities of AI lagging behind those of the competitors. Despite different rumours about Apple planning to cooperate with several industry leaders, the Company seems to have failed to introduce the AI features in the latest model as the users still need to wait for the update of iOS. 

Last but not least, a company might face higher capital and operational costs for expanding into new areas since it has been focused on its product range. Regarding Apple, it introduced Vision Pro, a mixed-reality headset, in 2023 and became available for purchase early this year. However, there were some comments critizing about poor wearing comfortability and limited usage scenarios which were not enough to boost the sales of the product. According to the report of the International Data Corporation (IDC), the Vision Pro has yet to sell 100,000 units in a quarter since its launch in the US in February, and it faces a 75% drop in domestic sales in the current quarter. 

Apart from the Vision Pro, the project of Apple car which was launched in 2014 and has been invested more than USD$10 billion in research and development. Nevertheless, the Company has decided to shut down the plan due to its narrow estimated profit and challenges posed by strong competitors such as Tesla. From the mentioned examples, it is obvious that Apple would face a lot of barriers to step out of its comfort zone and broaden the product range to increase profit which would be one of the drawbacks of vertical integration.

Group 4: Liu Xinyi, Tan Xiangling, Zhu Jiaqi, Niu Yunyi, Wang Xin, Shi Congshuang

Douban

Changes:

2005, Douban was founded as an UGC platform about book, movie, and music.

In its first 10 years, Douban gradually developed into an innovative network service for communication systems (crosstown, group, friends, and neighbors). At this stage, Douban added functions including offline activities and group topic discussions, further enriching the interactive experience.

Around 2010, Douban started expanding to mobile platforms, attempting to split its online pages and functions into multiple single apps to better serve the functional needs of different devices. During this stage, Douban launched 13 apps based on the existing web functions, such as Douban FM and Douban Moments. However, Douban’s team wasn’t able to support so many product lines, and the scattered products made it difficult for original web users to transit accurately. It once became a negative example of app fragmentation. In 2014, Douban stopped focusing on developing standalone apps, instead integrated all app functions into one, then officially launched the general Douban App.

Afterwards, Douban began to concentrate on commercial monetization in many aspects, some efforts devoted to the plan are as follows. In 2014, Douban launched the “Golden Fleece Plan,” allowing musicians to earn money based on the number of listens their works received. In 2016, Douban established a film company called “Spaceship Pictures” and came up with the “Young Directors Short Film Project.” In 2017, Douban introduced a paid content product called “Douban Time.” In 2018, Douban Reading was spun off and completed a 60 million RMB Series A financing. 

From 2020 onwards, due to government policy, Douban underwent a series of rectifications under the supervision of the Cyberspace Administration, hence losing large numbers of regular users.

In 2021, Douban was accused of "repeatedly transmitting information prohibited by laws and regulations", and “over-collecting of users' personal information”. In 2022, Douban stopped the private group function, disbanded 15 influential groups, and started real-name registration authenticated with mobile phone numbers from mainland China.

The Business Model:

·Advertising: Mainly use Native ads and banner ads to gain views, clicks and brand recognition

·Cross-platform collaboration: An essential part of the channel promotion for partners by inserting external links

·Business to business:selling the copyright of novels published on Douyue（豆瓣阅读）

·Business to consumer: e-commerce：豆瓣时间（pay-for-konwledge products） 豆小铺（group buying） 豆瓣豆品（self-support brand）

Who are the clients? 

1. People who are mostly over 25 and interested in music, movies, TV series and books. 

2. Advertisers that hold advertising campaigns to promote their products or services to users on Douban.

Key competitors

• Early Douban's main competitors were Sina Weibo, Renren and Kaixin. These social platforms have similarities with Douban in terms of user interaction and content generation. However, Douban's content is relatively more niche and artistic, so it has its own unique market positioning.
  

• Now Douban's competitors include Weibo, bilibili, and Zhihu. These apps all have the same content community, and the tone is similar. The tone refers to the product's current audience type (literary youth, stargazers, delicate boys, etc.), the type of content producer (ugc, not pugc and pgc)), the product's future path.

Group Discussion Week2 #1 Group 5

GROUP 5 MEMBER:

ZHANG Han

WANG Andi

XIANG Lushan

CHEN Yijie

YE Yijia

LI Yuwei

A Brief Overview of Bilibili in the Past Decade

Changes

We focus on the development of Bilibili over the last decade, hoping to analyze the rise and fall of one of the most influential online streaming applications and the community in China. In 2012, Bilibili launched mobile apps for Android and iOS, achieving full coverage from PC to mobile. In 2013, Bilibili held the first offline BML event in Shanghai, which is an event that is highly associated with ACGN culture. These progressions helped Bilibili develop a concentrated community of highly loyal users. 

With a very strong and solid beginning, Bilibili has aimed to expand its market from 20s fans of Japanese ACGN to GenZ, a much larger market, starting from the past decade. This requires Bilibili to decrease its attention on its traditional ACGN area and gradually expand its territory by introducing new forms of media, content, and fields. In 2014, Bilibili introduced live streaming while acquiring its first licensed anime series. This not only identified the first step of officializing the ACGN culture of Bilibili but also expanded its user community beyond the limitation of ACGN fans. Meanwhile, Bilibili began its service as an exclusive mobile game agency, increasing its diversity in offered media.

In 2017, Bilibili launched e-commerce services, aiming to monetize its community with profitable ACGN merchandise, and this service was soon expanded to other areas. In 2018, Bilibli completed its IPO and launched on NASDAQ, and in the next year, Bilibili held the first New Year’s Eve gala, an extraordinary party that not only reached 80 million livestream views but also significantly changed the public recognition of Bilibili from a rather small community of ACGN fans to a domestic platform of younger generation. After 2020, the portrait view of videos was introduced and encouraged by Bilibli by designing the short-video-favored algorithm, giving more exposure and views to the short videos and more profits to short video content creators. Many regard this policy as a counter-move to Tiktok, and this policy successfully absorbs a huge amount of new users to Bilibili at the cost of a severely decreased video quality.

We could see an obvious shift in Bilibili’s strategy from a highly “otaku” narrative to a milder and more general narrative of “the youth”. A huge variety of new media debuted on Bilibili during this process. Bilibili started to produce original content instead of being a sheer publisher and distributor of completed media, and this includes special online/offline events, documentaries, real-life shows, and festival/anniversary-related gala. This tendency is especially visible in terms of the shifting business model of Bilibili in the past decade. Meanwhile, Bilibili started to decrease its average video length using a more short-video-favored algorithm as well as a new video display format that could better fit in portrait playing mode. Although a controversial move from both the business perspective and the user community, Bilibili successfully enriched its platform with a huge amount of short videos and a whole new ecosystem along with them. As the identity and community composition of Bilibili changed tremendously, its 3C factors changed as well. Focusing on the “generalization” strategy of expanding Bilibii’s user group, we could easily anchor the main motivation behind every past activity of Bilibili.

Business model

Bilibili started by creating revenue out of offering advertisements as well as publishing video games. Bilibili served as a great platform and channel for many video game developers to distribute their games, and a Japanese game called FGO was so successful that it boosted Bilibili's IPO. Between 2017 and 2020, Bilibli was eager to expand its market scale and focused more on online live streaming and e-sports. After 2020, Bilibili realized the success of TikTok and Little Red Book, and they started to shorten their average video length by introducing a new format of videos and encouraging short video creators to use a short-video-favored algorithm.

Due to its high user retention, younger user base, and promising growth prospects, the platform has attracted significant attention from investors. However, since its inception, it has consistently reported financial losses, which have escalated with the company’s expansion. In 2022, losses peaked at 7.5 billion RMB. After a painful period of cost reduction and efficiency improvements in 2023, Bilibili entered a phase of steady growth, with an annual revenue of 22.5 billion RMB and a net loss of 4.8 billion RMB, representing a 35% reduction compared to the previous year. The company continues its efforts to achieve profitability.

Bilibili’s revenue model primarily depends on monetizing user traffic on its video platform, with its revenue streams divided into four main segments:

• Value-Added Services: 

This category includes premium memberships, paid videos, virtual gifts for live streaming, paid subscriptions, and virtual goods purchases. In the first quarter of 2024, Bilibili’s total revenue reached 5.66 billion RMB, with value-added services generating 2.53 billion RMB, a 17% year-on-year increase, making it the company's largest revenue contributor.

In 2017, Bilibili introduced its premium membership service, a conventional model for video platforms, offering members perks like high-definition video streaming and access to the latest anime series. However, in April 2021, new regulations requiring content review before broadcast led to a significant decrease in the number of anime series released each quarter, from around 50 to fewer than 10. This reduction, combined with the inability to synchronize with overseas releases and content censorship, diminished users’ willingness to pay for memberships.

In 2019, Bilibili attempted to expand its live-streaming services by investing heavily in esports broadcasting rights and signing contracts with popular celebrities. However, despite efforts in traditional content streaming, esports, and live e-commerce, the company failed to challenge the existing market leaders. Bilibili did manage to outperform competitors in virtual streamer live broadcasts during the 2021–2022 virtual idol boom, but interest has since waned.

In 2022, Bilibili launched a content subscription service, requiring users to pay to view specific videos by content creators (UPs). It also introduced paid “classroom” videos from specialized creators to leverage the influence of these creators for monetization. Additionally, the company launched paid customization options, such as avatars and emojis, aiming to expand low-cost payment channels and boost users’ willingness to spend.

• Advertising:

In 2023, Bilibili’s advertising revenue totaled 6.4 billion RMB. In the first quarter of 2024, advertising income reached 1.67 billion RMB, a 31% year-on-year increase.

Unlike other video platforms, Bilibili has adopted a distinctive advertising approach. It has committed not to include mandatory pre-roll advertisements before videos, a common practice for maximizing ad revenue on other platforms. As a result, Bilibili’s main advertising revenue comes from promotional links placed below videos and sponsored content integrated within recommended video feeds. The platform has also developed a publishing platform that serves as the primary source of advertising revenue. This platform allows advertisers to post advertisements, which content creators can select and embed into their videos, with payments processed through the platform.

• Game Distribution and Publishing:

Bilibili collaborates with online game developers to distribute mobile games and acts as an agent for anime-style mobile games from Japan, Korea, and other regions. In 2023, the game business generated 4 billion RMB, a 20% decrease from 2022’s 5 billion RMB, accounting for only 18% of total annual revenue.

In 2017, Bilibili’s game division contributed 83% of the company’s total revenue of 2.5 billion RMB, with the Japanese mobile game Fate/Grand Order (FGO) being the primary driver of this success. This reliance on gaming led investors to question whether Bilibili could be financially sustainable as a video platform alone. The CEO at the time declared that Bilibili would reduce the share of game revenue in its overall income. Nevertheless, the company has continued to pursue growth in the gaming sector. In 2019, it invested heavily in promoting the exclusive release of Princess Connect, along with other games, either jointly published or co-developed, though none have matched FGO’s commercial success. Currently, the main source of gaming revenue is the exclusive release of Azur Lane in 2018.

• IP Derivatives and E-commerce:

In 2023, Bilibili’s revenue from IP derivatives and e-commerce amounted to 2.18 billion RMB, less than 10% of total revenue, down from 3.09 billion RMB the previous year.

The e-commerce business primarily consists of “Member Purchase” and “Magical Draw,” an online lottery system, both selling related products of Bilibili’s own IP and from anime IPs. Bilibili previously attempted to diversify by introducing more electronic products to the “Member Purchase” platform, aiming to compete with traditional e-commerce giants, but these efforts were largely unsuccessful. Furthermore, the decline in consumer spending among younger demographics has significantly impacted e-commerce performance. As a result, Bilibili has shifted towards advertising partnerships with platforms like Taobao and JD.com, leading to a contraction in its e-commerce operations.

Competitors

• For animation： AcFun(in terms of ACGN and UGC)

Both Bilibili and AcFun imitated Niconico（a Japanese video platform), with AcFun founded in 2007 and Bilibili founded in 2009. Bilibili initially benefited from the trough period of AcFun, which attracted a large number of users from AcFun.

• Live streaming platforms： Douyu, Huya, and other online live-streaming platforms

In October 2019, Bilibili beat out Douyu and Huya to take the exclusive Chinese broadcasting rights for the League of Legends S-Series for 3 years.

            In December 2019,  Bilibili signed Feng Timo, the former Douyu head anchor.

• Short-video platforms： TikTok, Xiaohongshu, Kwai, and other integrated short video platforms that combined the function of online merchants

Bilibili went live with a short video feature in 2020 to increase user growth, but it also caused some influencers to stop updating their long videos due to poor-quality short videos taking traffic and video views away from high-quality long videos.

• Long-video platforms： IQiYi, Youku, Tencent Video and other online long-video platforms

IQiYi, Youku, and Tencent Video are more inclined to video players and are only tools for watching dramas and variety shows. The community attribute of Bilibili is more prominent, the high-quality videos of influencers and users' comments and pop-ups together build a quality community culture, and the sense of immersive experience is greatly enhanced.

Client

Customer evolution:

• Early ACGN fan core：

The secondary community, i.e. young people who love subcultural content such as anime, manga, and games

• Pan-Entertainment Content Attracts Diverse Users：

In addition to the original secondary yuan group, Station B began to attract more users interested in pan-entertainment content, including fans of music, dance, knowledge, digital, life, food, and other fields. The user groups at this stage are more diversified and the age group is gradually expanding, but the core users are still mainly young people.

• High-Quality Content Attracts Professional Users:

In addition to the original fans of secondary and pan-entertainment content, B Station has attracted a large number of users with a demand for high-quality video content, including professionals and enthusiasts in the fields of education, science and technology, finance, and economics. These users are not only concerned about the entertainment of the content, but also the depth and value of the content.

User profile: Generation Z

They typically receive quality education and are technology savvy, with a strong demand for cultural products and avenues for self-expression and social interaction.

Group Discussion_Group 8

Group 8

LI Jiayuan

TENG Qianyu

ZHANG Yujia

ZHANG Leyan

ZHENG Xiaoyu

Taobao

Changes:

1. Changes in business model

Taobao has evolved from a C2C platform to encompass the B2C sector with the launch of Tmall.

2. Changes in revenue structure

Taobao has evolved from merely relying on advertising and commission income to a more diversified revenue structure, including advertising, commissions, and technology service fees.

3. Changes in payment methods

Taobao has vigorously promoted mobile payments, making Alipay the primary payment method. Subsequently, Taobao has transitioned from primarily using Alipay to embracing various payment options, including the recent integration of WeChat Pay. These changes broke the previous payment limitations, facilitating consumers' payment choices and improving the convenience of shopping.

4. Improvements in mobile terminal

In the past ten years, the Taobao app has been continuously iterated, adding many new functions and services, such as live streaming and personalized recommendations, to meet the changing needs of users.

5. Innovation in Technology and Algorithms

Taobao has made significant investments in search and recommendation technologies, achieving personalized recommendations with the "thousand-person-thousand-face" approach, enhancing the precision and efficiency of search. Through real-time bidding systems and algorithm optimization, the platform has improved its advertising monetization capabilities.

6. Changes in marketing and promotion

Live streaming and short videos become mainstream:

Live streaming and short videos have become important means for merchants to promote. Taobao holds relevant activities and invites many celebrities and online influencers to participate, enhancing brand influence.

The development of social e-commerce:

Functions such as "Taoyou Circle"（淘友圈）are launched to increase user interaction. It also cooperates with social platforms like WeChat to expand marketing channels.

7. Expansion into Lower-tier Markets

Taobao has optimized its supply chain and logistics systems to better serve consumers in lower-tier cities and rural areas, expanding its reach into these markets.

3Cs Model:

1. Business Model

B2C and C2C are its main models, which meet various user needs. C2C mode attracts a large number of sellers, while the B2C model provides more formal and professional goods and services.

Taobao's revenue model is diversified. It can earn profits from companies and businesses. Based on the data collected from quantities of transaction behaviors and its technology ability, Taobao can offer companies or businesses the analysis results from those data, helping them learn more about consumers and better constructing their brands. Additionally, in the transaction commission mode, the platform charges sellers a commission as a service fee, which is determined based on the product category, price, seller level, and other factors. Taobao also relies on various methods such as advertising, value-added services, financial services, and membership services to achieve profitability.

As a dominant platform in e-commerce field, supported by Alibaba, Taobao has got the ability to enhance its vertical integration and to form a comprehensive and completed commercial chain. For instance, Taobao has a strong alliance with Cainiao and Alipay to broaden its profit channels.

2. Competitors

As one of the earliest e-commerce platforms, Taobao is dedicated to providing qualified and affordable goods to all consumers. Nowadays, its core competitors in China are mainly Jingdong, Pinduoduo and Red, Douyin and Kwai. These companies have different market positioning and strategy. Jingdong relies on self-operated model and logistics efficiency to win the trust of customers. Pinduoduo mainly attracts customers based on its low-price strategy. Red, Douyin and Kwai, on the other hand, are strong in live e-commerce, and they are all content-driven communities.

3.Clients

Taobao's users are mainly aged over 30, with a higher proportion of female users and urban users. These users prefer to shop through mobile app and have high requirements for the price, quality and diversity of goods. Over the past few years, thanks to a shift in its business model, Taobao has reached 900 million monthly active users.