Enterprises
In the past 20 years, the use of the Internet by enterprises has mainly focused on external marketing. This can be seen from the word grafting marketing after a series of Internet services: Search marketing, BBS marketing, blog marketing, social marketing (including community Weibo and WeChat), etc. Early portals did not have the word portal marketing, but the role of portals for enterprises is the same as marketing: advertising and public relations. In addition, a large part of corporate marketing applications is e-commerce, which means companies can monetize their products by selling them over the Internet.
Promotion and sales are indeed very important to enterprises, but obviously, enterprises do not only have these two dimensions. Some companies have a heavy emphasis on warehousing and logistics, and some companies have a heavy emphasis on R&D technology. Of course, all companies have administration, personnel, and finance. These functions have seen a lot of computerization and digitization in the past two decades, but lack a lot of Internetization.
Take recruitment as an example. When most Chinese companies recruit, they are relatively non-Internet-based. This is also the reason why LinkedIn can rise in the United States, but in China, similar services have not made much progress in the past ten years. In the next decade, there may be major changes.
In Chinese enterprises, the main Internet tools are IM and email. This has indeed brought huge efficiency improvements to the internal communication of the enterprise, but both IM and email are relatively lightweight services, and their more important functions are: exchanging messages and file transfers. It is difficult to handle heavy-duty requirements such as team collaboration. OA, as a kind of software, was once very popular in the past, but in specific applications - anyone who has used it will find it very cumbersome and inconvenient, especially OA's performance on the mobile terminal is very poor, and it is not in line with the mobile Internet at all. future trends.
Similar enterprise social platforms have begun to emerge. Foreign YAMMER is one of them. I would like to call it "Internet-based social OA". This service was later purchased by Microsoft for a huge US$1.2 billion. Enter the account. According to the consistent style of China's Internet business, there are of course similar services appearing in China, and Mingdao is one of them.
In the next decade, Chinese companies will be more penetrated by the Internet. It is possible that in this decade, the "Internet industry" as an industry will slowly disappear, because most companies have completely Internetized.
Individuals
Unlike enterprises, a large proportion of Chinese people have become fully Internet-savvy—especially in first- and second-tier cities. Every aspect of our lives - from communication to shopping to entertainment and even financial investment - is closely related to the Internet.
The changes that will happen to Chinese people in the next decade are most likely to be the evolution of equipment use. In the past two decades, we have mainly relied on PCs and laptops. In the past two years, mobile devices have emerged, and smartphones and tablets have become a trend. These devices are called "handheld devices" and are physically closer to our bodies than PC laptops. The future trend will see the emergence of devices that are even closer to us on a large scale: wearable and implantable devices.
Wearable devices have also gained momentum in China in the past two years, such as wristbands, watches, and even rings and business cards. But generally speaking, the current usage scenarios are not rich enough for the public to accept it. The main consumers now are a group of people who are extremely obsessed with digital devices. Although I personally can't think of any scenarios in which this category will become a necessity, I am still optimistic about its future prospects. As the device closest to us, wearables will become mainstream in the next decade.
Implantable devices, which are often seen in science fiction novels, movies and TV series, even now, have some small-scale applications, such as in the medical field. However, the main application scenario of current implantable devices is that once people get sick, they need help, rather than improving the life efficiency of ordinary people.
For example, implanting a chip in the brain can make people remember things forever, cutting off real legs and installing prosthetic limbs to make them move faster. Even if you can't do this kind of thing today, even if it can be done, many people still won't accept it - this is still Human?
Regardless of any value judgment, what I want to believe is that in the next decade, there will be some signs of such implantable devices, and it may not be widely popularized yet, but news reports, The use of special groups (rich people) may be expected.
On the one hand, more and more smart digital devices are carried by individuals (and even in their bodies). On the other hand, more and more digital devices will appear in one of the most important life scenes of individuals: at home. chemical equipment. For example, TVs, this category will have two subcategories: boxes and Internet TVs, both of which will be very popular. The home appliance industry, including refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines, etc., will be redefined as the "digital equipment industry." Moreover, even products such as furniture and electric lights are very likely to be digitalized and connected to the Internet.
Therefore, in the next ten years, for ordinary people, all kinds of things used in the past will become an "information product", something that can generate and transmit data.
Media
The media is also a kind of commercial organization. However, as a relatively special type of commercial organization (with externalities and three-party transaction model), it deserves special mention.
In the past two decades, professional media such as PGC (organization-generated content) have been greatly challenged by UGC (user-generated content), and in the next ten years, we will see The large-scale rise of EGC, that is, companies publishing content. The specific operating methods are similar to companies opening social accounts, launching apps, making websites, etc. These tools have been available for use in the past two years, and will be used by enterprises on a larger scale in the future.
There will be a so-called super media platform. It may not be a media that produces content, but it has a large number of endpoint users and is organized by social networks. Then all kinds of PGC, UGC, and EGC flourish on this platform, and what the super media platform does is to push the right information to the right users: matching. Algorithm technology is the core of the super media platform.
Ordinary users’ customization of media content will be greatly deepened, and more and more people will adopt this information consumption model. Customization breeds tribes based on different values. Community is the most important feature of the future Internet. Whether it is reading or consuming, it will be accompanied by a chain of social relationships.
Based on China’s national conditions, most traditional media will not “die” as many people say. On the contrary, many state-owned media may move towards conglomeration and use resources and capital to integrate financial means to directly or indirectly control many so-called market-oriented new media projects. Whether paper or traditional TV, it is true that the audience will be reduced day by day, but this does not mean that these state-owned media will disappear from now on. They are moving to the so-called big cultural industry. From a capital perspective, there has been a huge “fusion” of traditional media and new media, and those that do not conform to this trend will be eliminated. The centralization and monopoly of the media industry will enter a new level.
The media itself is increasingly regarded as a means of business: to improve the efficiency of the business, the media itself, as its purpose and mission, will become a supporting media, that is, it will be carried out by some consortiums with sufficient financial resources. There is not much support from commercial purposes to fulfill its function as a social watchman.
We will completely enter the post-media era. This post-word is full of inherent contradictions like post-modern society. On the one hand, the media is increasing fragmentation, and on the other hand, the media is becoming centralized and conglomerated. . These two wings will develop together in a strange way and become the mutually reinforcing features of the information world in the next ten years.