What will be the hottest thing in 2016?

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2016 has arrived. I wonder if you have ever thought about the development direction of the Internet in 2016?

In 2015, the hottest trends were undoubtedly O2O and Internet finance.

O2O in 2015 can be said to have experienced ups and downs. At the beginning of 2014, I founded an O2O company. The reason why the company finally went bankrupt was because Meituan used subsidy policies to plunder the market. This was the beginning of 2015. It was also this policy of Meituan that set off a capital war in the O2O industry. After seeing Meituan's achievements, investors began to pour into this industry. It was also because of the promotion of capital that the O2O industry rose rapidly like bamboo after spring rain. Almost every service industry began to provide door-to-door service. By the third quarter, capitalists began to wake up and realized that this industry was a bottomless pit. They began to withdraw their capital. Many companies went bankrupt due to broken capital chains. The remaining few giants that burned money merged or were supported. The farce of O2O came to an end.

Another very popular industry in 2015 was Internet finance. Internet finance also experienced great ups and downs in 2015. I remember when I was looking for a job in the middle of the year, I saw various Internet finance companies recruiting on Lagou.com. There were all kinds of companies, including crowdfunding, stocks, loans, funds, etc. But at the end of the year, a list of Internet finance industry deaths shocked me! How could there be so many companies! The financial industry should be very profitable? Why did so many companies die? I kept asking myself this question until Ezubao was blocked for suspected illegal fundraising. I realized that Internet finance is just playing a fringe game. If you play it well, you will be the next Alipay, but if you play it badly, you will go to jail.

So what will be the hottest things in 2016? I think it will be smart home, virtual reality and big data.

2015 can be said to be the first year of smart home. In 2015, when my company was about to go bankrupt, I thought about switching to smart home, but because the technical threshold was too high, I couldn't enter this industry in a short time, so I was forced to give up. This is also a big regret in my life. If I had insisted on entering this industry at that time, I might have been the most popular company this year (OK! We are getting off topic!) I don't know if you still remember that in mid-2015, major companies launched their own wireless routers. Do you know why major companies want to get involved in the router industry? That's right! You are right, because wireless routers are the brains of smart homes, and major companies want to seize this brain. But I think Xiaomi Grocery won in the end. Xiaomi's smart home system has already taken shape. Other companies are still only on wireless routers. In 2016, Xiaomi Midea, Huawei Haier, and Bolin will be the main force of smart homes.

2015 was also the first year of virtual reality. I remember that at the beginning of the year, a company launched a pair of virtual reality glasses (I forgot which company!), and then all major companies began to develop this technology. By the end of the year, Sony had developed the first generation of virtual reality helmets, which could be connected to simple games. I think the situation in the Japanese anime Sword Art Online will really happen. The world will be divided into two, one is the virtual world and the other is the real world, and the two worlds will eventually merge into one world.

Why didn’t I add big data to the hottest industries in 2015? Because I think big data was not the hottest in 2015, but this year. The book “From ID to DT” produced by Alibaba Research Institute said that the Internet is changing from the network age to the data age (this may not be the original words! But the meaning is the same). I think this sentence is very right. In the future, our every move may affect our credit. If our credit rating is low, it will be difficult to apply for a visa to go abroad, it will be difficult to get a loan to buy a car, and it will be difficult to get a loan to buy a house. This is the power of big data, but these were not reflected in 2015. I believe that this year these are no longer imagination.

The question arises again: what will the Internet look like in five years?

I think that in five years, the Internet of Things and the Internet will merge into one, and everything will be connected. The situation in the Three-Body Problem may really happen, and every wall will be a touch screen.